


we ain't such a complicated thing

by Yuu_chi



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Even if you're not big on omegaverse, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Hanzo's legs are prosthetics, I promise this is gonna be a very healthy and communicative fic, Kinda, Light Angst, M/M, There's still a lotta pining, blizzard can fight me, fluff and comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2018-12-01 06:44:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11480871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: Hanzo gives his little huff of a laugh and things slip back into a comfortable silence. Jesse is just considering how to redirect the conversation again, sipping from his mug to bide time, when Hanzo says, with absolutely no leadup at all, “I’m going into heat.”Jesse spits out his coffee. “I’m sorry,” he coughs, pounding on his chest, “what?”





	1. Chapter 1

Jesse was aware that Hanzo was an omega in a vague, thoughtless way. The kind of way one knew that the sky was blue or the grass was green; background knowledge to an otherwise steady existence.

There had been times much earlier in their acquaintance when it had been a more… immediate sort of awareness. Hanzo was attractive, almost devastatingly so, and although Jesse tried not to be obvious about it, Hanzo also smelt real damn _good_. Jesse was only human, alright? It was biology to sit up and take notice when somebody like that crossed his path.

But Jesse’s mother had also raised him a goddamn gentleman and he kept his mouth closed and his curiosity firmly locked away. Hanzo was skittish enough, defensive even in the face of friendliness, and Jesse would not make matters worse by being the kind of alpha that intruded where he wasn’t invited.

That wasn’t him, and he’d be dead before he’d let it be. Possibly because Hanzo would have nailed him right between the eyes like he’d have deserved.

As time went on Jesse was rewarded for his restraint by a tentative friendship that formed in late nights on the roof drinking and early morning with tea and coffee in their hands. Hanzo opened up to him slowly but steadily and with a caution that bordered on heart wrenching sometimes, and Jesse was more smitten with his company than he’d ever been with the vague possibility of _what-if’s_.

Hanzo was attractive and he smelt great, but he was also just… a good guy. Company that Jesse could drown himself in if he could. He was quick witted and sharp tongued, with a deadpan dry humour that made Jesse laugh himself to tears. He was moody at times, true, but he was always aware of it, took steps to pull away before he could lash out, and always apologized in the wake of a temper that resulted in casualties.

It was hard to remember that Hanzo had killed Jesse’s best friend once-upon-a-time. Not because Hanzo let it be forgotten, of course, because Hanzo would sooner fall on his blade than give himself to forgiveness, but because there was nothing but traces of that man within him now.

Jesse just liked the guy. Pure and simple. In a lot of different ways. And he’d sooner head back to Deadlock than put that friendship to risk.

So yeah, Jesse was _aware_ that Hanzo was an omega, but it was background knowledge. White noise. Only a little deliberately forgotten.

The Tuesday after a week-long mission though, Jesse yawns his way into the kitchen to find it empty. For a second he pauses in the doorway, squints at the empty table as he scratches sleepily at his hair. He checks the clock on the stove, and it assures him it’s just after seven in the morning.

Jesse is more confused than he is concerned, really. Hanzo has been with Overwatch for six months now, and Jesse doesn’t think he’s seen the man sleep in this late in the whole of his stay. Let alone since their morning routine had developed together.

He turns around and leaves, frowning, and bumps into Genji on his way out.

“Hey, good timing partner,” Jesse says, catching his arm. “You seen that brother of yours around?”

With Genji’s faceplate there’s no expression to see, but Jesse has known him long enough to read a frown in his surprised pause. “He is not with you?”

“Kitchen’s empty,” Jesse says and then, unconvinced, “Ah, never mind it. He probably just overslept.”

“My brother does not oversleep,” Genji says, like Jesse is being purposefully obtuse.

“Well he sure as hell ain’t hiding in the refrigerator.”

“Did you check?” Genji asks, and it doesn’t entirely sound like a joke.

“I reckon I might check his room first,” Jesse says, clapping Genji on the shoulder as he passes.

Genji makes a dissatisfied noise but waves Jesse away all the same.

Hanzo’s room is three doors on from Jesse’s own, in the corner of the little corridor that houses more empty rooms than full. Walking through and seeing all the blank nameplates always makes Jesse feel old in a way he can’t entirely control. A reminder, he guesses, of the differences between _now_ and _then_.

Better differences, Jesse tries to remind himself, because he might have been young but he wasn’t no fool. The politics of the old Overwatch had been exhausting and infinite, and he remembers clearly the exhausted, furious look on Gabriel’s face whenever he’d leave a meeting.

That’s a line of thought too dark to venture down so early in the morning, and Jesse pushes away the anxiousness gnawing in his stomach, drowns it beneath curious worry instead.

Hanzo’s name is written on his door, first in Japanese that Jesse couldn’t read if his life depended on it, and then in beautifully scripted English. It seems unfair to him that Hanzo’s handwriting should transcend language barriers so easy when Jesse can barely write legibly in one.

He knocks on the door, lightly at first, and then slightly heavier when Hanzo doesn’t answer the first time. The curiosity is slowly losing out to the concern now, and Jesse adjusts his hat nervously, suddenly achingly aware of all the bumps and falls Hanzo had taken in the week of their mission.

Jesse ain’t no fancy doctor, but he’s an expert in the carnage of combat. He knows that not all wounds are so immediately clear, and Hanzo’s such a shut-in that Jesse’s not entirely sure he’d have left to find Angela even if he realized he _was_ injured in the aftermath.

Jesse is just considering the merits of calling Reinhardt to break it down when the door swings open and he comes face to face with a dazed, irritable looking Hanzo.

“You’re alive,” Jesse says, when what he’d absolutely meant to say was _you’re awake_.

Hanzo blinks at him and rubs a hand over his face tiredly. He smells soft and sleepy in a way that is appealing to Jesse at a bone deep level. Comfortable and warm. Jesse forces his attention away with iron will power.

“As I was when you saw me last night,” Hanzo agrees in a voice like gravel. “What time is it?”

Hanzo seems like he’s still asleep on his feet, fumbling with the ribbon around his wrist to tie his loose hair up and out of the way. He manages, but it’s adorably crooked, leaning a little more to the right than he thinks Hanzo intended.

Jesse stares at him dumbly, a little at a loss for words. “Around half past, I reckon.”

Hanzo squints. “Half past _what_?”

“Seven.”

Hanzo pauses, looks at Jesse blankly for a second as the words seem to register, and then is very suddenly _awake_. “I beg your pardon?”

Jesse smiles at him, because Hanzo is so very rarely caught off guard. His concern is slowly turning to delight.

“Well, I’ll be,” he says, giving a low whistle and grinning as he leans against the doorframe. “Seems to me sunshine that you might have overslept for once in your life.”

Hanzo speechless is truly a sight to behold and Jesse wishes he had a camera so he could plaster this moment all over his walls. Hanzo’s baffled expression would be the first thing to greet him every morning. It’d be a great way to start the day.

“It appears so,” Hanzo says after a second. “I … apologize for missing our appointment.”

“Aw hell darlin’, it’s just breakfast, I’d hardly call it an appointment.” Jesse takes a step back, still unable to tamp down on his grin. “I reckon you needed the extra sleep if it overcame that rigid self-discipline of yours.”

Hanzo looks offended at the very idea, but he’s gotten better these days about not needlessly arguing for the sake of his pride. Jesse is proud of him.

“I’ll let you get back to your beauty sleep,” Jesse offers, tipping his hat at him.

“No need,” Hanzo says immediately. “I should not have slept so late to begin with. I’ll get dressed and be with you in a moment.” He pauses for a second and then adds, slightly less sure of himself, “If you haven’t eaten yet, of course.”

Jesse snorts and pats at his stomach. “Ain’t had a thing, but even if I had I’ve always got room for another course in your company. I’ll meet you in the kitchen, sugar.”

“I’ll be there shortly,” Hanzo promises and Jesse turns to leave.

Well he’ll be damned. Looks like the dragon is as human as the rest of them after all.

He turns around to get in one last snide remark before he leaves but it dries up on his tongue when he catches sight of Hanzo.

He’s standing at the door still, one hand to his forehead and the other on the doorframe. He’s frowning, but it seems more puzzled than anything else. He looks… concerned, unsteady on his feet.

Jesse is a smart enough man to realize this isn’t a moment he was supposed to see. He snaps his head around and beats it to the kitchen like there’s fire licking at his heels, but the worried furrow of Hanzo’s brow follows him.

.

After that it’s the start of what Jesse can only describe as a downward trend.

Even though Hanzo never oversleeps again, Jesse sees the changes keenly. Hanzo is distracted, misses more shots than he should (which is to say his accuracy drops from Superhuman to merely Magnificent). He eats less, seems exhausted even though he vanishes off to his room before the sky even goes dark.

He’s also …. weirdly more social. Tactile in a way that Jesse notices in a heartbeat, reaching out to grab at Jesse’s arm, hovering close at Genji’s back. Once, Jesse even notices him setting a hand on Hana’s shoulder as they talk which is admittedly adorable as all hell but also deeply unusual.

He considers bringing it up with Hanzo, but it’s clear to see that Hanzo himself is fully aware of what’s happening. More than once he seems to realize he’s standing just a touch too close to one of the team to be natural, and pointedly steps away, scowling. He clocks in more time at the training range for every shot he misses.

If Hanzo hasn’t brought it up himself, then it isn’t for Jesse to broach. It’s hard enough to get Hanzo to talk about the things that matter without making him shy away with conversations about the avoidable.

Still, one day when Hanzo’s distracted shadowing Genji at the training range, Jesse takes it upon himself to slip off, hat tucked low over his face and his swagger deliberately casual as he strolls into the infirmary.

Angela looks up from her desk, smiling as she sees him.

“Jesse,” she greets with a warmth that has never faded even in their darker days. She sets aside her pen. “Unlike you to come visiting here of all places. I usually have to drag you kicking and screaming anywhere near the infirmary.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Jesse lies cheerfully. “Besides, no place can be that awful when it’s got you to brighten it up.”

Angela looks flattered but largely unswayed. She’d been immune to his charms since before Jesse had even learnt how to weaponize them. “What’s the occasion?” She asks.

Jesse makes a show of looking around the room. “Well, you see, I ain’t exactly here for myself,” he admits.

“Unsurprising,” Angela agrees, because she knows him better than most.

Jesse scuffs a boot on the floor, rubs at the brim of his hat, and blurts, before he can lose his nerve, “Has Hanzo spoken to you lately?”

Angela pauses. “About what, precisely?”

“Ah, hell. You know exactly what I mean,” Jesse says. “He’s been acting jumper than a malfunctioning jackhammer lately. It’s hardly been subtle.”

“Jesse,” Angela sighs. “You know I can’t exactly go around discussing other patients with you.”

“Friends,” Jesse stresses, stepping forward and setting his hands on her desk. “We’re more than what Overwatch has us here doing, Ange. And I ain’t - I ain’t looking to pry. God help me, the last thing I want to do is invade his privacy. You don’t gotta tell me nothin’, I just wanna know if I need to drag him here myself. Just wanna know he’s _alright._ ”

“Kicking and screaming?” Angela asks wryly.

“If that’s the way it’s gotta be.”

She considers him for a moment, tapping her pale pink fingernail against the desk as she thinks. Angela has always been a doctor before anything else; even when it had killed her. She takes her vows with more seriousness than Jesse has ever seen in anybody else.

Finally, she says, “We’ve talked. In an official capacity.”

Jesse holds his breath.

Angela sighs, but this time her voice is gentle. “He’s fine, Jesse. That’s all I’m going to be saying. If you want the details, you’re welcome to try and wrestle them from him.”

Jesse lets his breath out, feels the give in the tightness of his bones. “That’s all I was asking for,” he says honestly, stepping away. “A man’s entitled to some privacy, hard as it might be to get around these parts.”

Angela gives him a smile and then a fond pat on the back of his hand. It’s fairly motherly for a woman who isn’t truly _that_ much older than him. “I think he’s probably entitled to some support, too,” she says, and it’s not a suggestion because Angela is not in the habit of giving those when she has _Doctors Orders_ to give, but it’s heavy with implication. “Talk to him, Jesse.”

“Only if he’ll let me,” Jesse says, and Angela doesn’t push.

.

Jesse bides his time, turning ideas over and tossing them out in equal measure. He’s fully prepared to be the one to bring this up, which is why it surprises him when he bumps square into Hanzo on his way to Winston’s office.

“Woah there,” Jesse says, reaching out to steady Hanzo on reflex more than anything else.

Hanzo gives him an amused look but doesn’t bat his over helpful hands away. “This may surprise you, McCree, but I know how to keep myself on two feet without assistance.”

“Sorry,” Jesse says immediately, dropping his hands. “Didn’t mean to get grabby with ya’.” he looks over Hanzo’s shoulder to Winston’s office. “You seeing the boss man for something in particular?”

Hanzo makes a noncommittal noise. “Perhaps,” he says vaguely, and then changes the topic swiftly. “Why are you here?”

“Thought I’d check in to see if there’s any missions kicking about,” Jesse admits. “He mentioned something about a Talon raid up North. Wanted to see if he needed a hand with it.”

“Genji’s volunteered for that one too,” Hanzo says. “He’s been grounded for too long, I think.”

“How about you, sunshine? Seems like a sniper might be a real handy addition to the away team. Keep the two of us in line.”

Hanzo snorts. “The two of you will be the death of me,” he agrees with an easiness that warms Jesse to the pit of his stomach, “but no. That was actually what I was talking with Winston about.”

Jesse blinks at him. “No?”

“I’ve…” Hanzo seems to struggle to find the right words for a second. “Requested leave, I suppose.”

“ _Leave?_ ”

The contentedness Jess had been nursing turns to furious panic in a heartbeat.

Jesse had thought Hanzo had been doing well these days, that he’d found his niche in their little freakshow of a squad. Hanzo had seemed - well, perhaps _happy_ might be a stretch in the current political climate, but happ- _ier_.

He’d been worried about Hanzo's jumpiness, but he hadn’t been concerned that it might mean he wanted to _leave_.

Jesse needs to say something, needs to stop him, but he’s lost his words, and here Hanzo is looking as relaxed as if they were discussing what to have for dinner.

“I -.” He chokes out, and Hanzo’s face jumps from blank to immediately stricken.

“McCree,” Hanzo says, a hand on Jesse’s shoulder suddenly. “Breathe, I am not _leaving._ I’d be coming _back_. It’s merely for a week - not forever.”

Jesse sucks in a breath and presses a hand to his pounding heart. “Fuck, Hanzo. Give a man a heart attack why don’t you,” he wheezes, wincing.

Hanzo squeezes his shoulder apologetically. “I apologize. I - did not realize you might interpret it like that. Overwatch is - it is where I am now. I have no intentions to leave it. I thought you knew that.”

Jesse lets out an uncomfortable laugh. “So did I until you scared me out of my damn boots. We gotta work on the way you start your conversations.”

Hanzo lets out a huff that might be a chuckle. His hand hasn’t dropped from where it’s clutching at Jesse’s shirt. Jesse gets the impression Hanzo isn’t even fully aware of what he’s doing.

“I’ll try,” he promises.

Jesse sighs and straightens up a little, considering Hanzo with a squinted look. “Gotta ask though, weird timing for a vacation. You heading off to do something special?”

Hanzo’s look changes from fond to speculating. He looks Jesse up and down thoughtfully with a small but growing frown. Jesse has the feeling he’s been considered for a challenge he wasn’t even aware he’d issued.

“I…” Hanzo cuts himself off and looks over his shoulder to Winston’s office and then back at Jesse. “Would you like to join me on the roof, perhaps?”

Jesse’s a smart enough man to recognize a request for privacy when he hears it, and he gestures down the hall. “Lead the way, sweetheart.” He pauses for a second and then adds, “But you might have to let me go so we can walk.”

Hanzo blinks and then steps away, dropping his hand like he’d been burnt. Jesse is immediately disappointed with himself for triggering that reaction.

“Apologies,” Hanzo says, flexing his hand slightly. “I - had not realized I was -.”

“Chill, Hanzo. It’s fine. Ain’t doing me no harm,” he promises, and then, because he doesn’t trust whatever might come out of his mouth next, “let’s head out before it gets dark. Some of us don’t come equipped with night vision.”

Hanzo snorts but lets Jesse guide him out of the hall. Jesse stops by the kitchen for a second to make them each a cup of tea and some coffee, because he’s long learnt that conversations with Hanzo go easier when he’s well plied with something soothing. Hanzo lets him do it with minimal huffing before seizing him by the shoulders and directing him out towards the door that leads the roof.

Most days Hanzo like to climb there himself, but Jesse had put his foot down on that a while ago. Hanzo might be able to scale a flawless wall like it was a convenient staircase, but Jesse ain’t trained in no freaky ninja shit. His spurs are for decoration, not mountain climbing.

The sun’s only just starting to set, and the glare is intense as all heck, but Hanzo settles down in the small flick of shade granted by one off the rooftop storage containers. His prosthetics click loudly as he folds them beneath himself. Jesse settles down next time with slightly more caution, all too aware of the fifty foot drop to sheer concrete.

Hanzo takes his tea from Jesse softly, takes a small sip and lets out a sigh, relaxing a little in the open space and Jesse gives him a moment of content before he asks, a little cautious, “Is this about how …. jumpy you’ve been lately?”

Hanzo’s face immediately drops into a frown so fast that Jesse is a little sorry for ruining the moment. “Have I been so obvious?”

“Only a little,” Jesse says awkwardly.

“And to those who talk to Doctor Ziegler, I assume.”

“You know she’d kick your ass if she heard you calling her that,” Jesse says automatically to cover the feeling of betrayal.

It must show on his face though because Hanzo gives him an amused side glance and says gently, “You must have known she would not keep it from me.”

Jesse pulls a face. “I promise I wasn’t prying or nothin’. I just -.”

“Jesse,” Hanzo interrupts, “it’s fine. She told me. And I - I’m pleased that you were concerned for my wellbeing enough to ask.”

Jesse feels a little embarrassed now and he tugs his hat a little lower to hide behind. “Well, I guess that makes me pleased that you were pleased then, partner.”

Hanzo gives his little huff of a laugh and things slip back into a comfortable silence. Jesse is just considering how to redirect the conversation again, sipping from his mug to bide time, when Hanzo says, with absolutely no leadup at all, “I’m going into heat.”

Jesse spits out his coffee. “I’m sorry,” he coughs, pounding on his chest, “ _what_?”

Hanzo looks calmly out at the sunset and takes a pointed sip of his tea. His shoulders though are a little tight, and Jesse gets the impression that this conversation might be a little like pulling off a bandaid for him. Deal with the unpleasantness swiftly without showing an ounce of discomfort, as is the Shimada way.

“My heat is coming,” he says again, and hearing it a second time makes it no more real for Jesse. “It … took me some time to recognize the signs. I’ll be leaving the base for a week to take care of it, and then I shall return.”

Jesse makes a strangled noise, wiping his coffee off his face. “I’m not following,” he admits.

“It’s not a complicated thing to understand,” Hanzo says, and there’s more of a snap to his tone now. He’s wearing the same expression Jesse has seen on his face right before he sinks an arrow between a man’s eyes. “If you are not following, that is your problem, not mine. Or do you think I should be ashamed of my heat? That it’s not a thing to talk of so openly?”

Jesse would argue that dragging him to the rooftop after a week of avoiding this discussion is hardly _open_ , but it’s not the point Hanzo’s trying to make. His second thought is to respond _are_ you _ashamed?_

He doesn’t, though, because it’s hurtful and unfair. It is also completely not the point. There are people out there who _do_ think that still, even after all these years, and Jesse cannot blame Hanzo for his defensiveness in the face of that.

It’s not truly about Jesse and it’d be ridiculous to take offensive as if it is.

“Of course I don’t,” he says instead. “I don’t live in the dark ages, Hanzo.” He settles a hand on Hanzo’s shoulder but Hanzo remains stiff under his touch. He gives it a squeeze. “You just startled the heck out of me is all. Can’t blame a man for being a little surprised when you spring it on him like that.”

Hanzo’s jaw is stiff and he’s still not looking at Jesse. “I’m surprised you didn’t know already.”

Jesse raises his brow. “You know what Angela told - _Oh_ , you mean because I’m an _alpha_?” Hanzo’s silence is answer enough, and Jesse can’t help but chuckle. “Heck Hanzo, I’m an alpha, not a mind reader. Sure, I knew something was up, but that was because you looked as unsettled as a wasp in a kicked nest.”

“Your senses must be very dull then,” Hanzo says, only a little bitingly.

“Just like the rest of me,” Jesse agrees easily, and Hanzo finally seems to relax a little under his touch, perhaps finally figuring out Jesse has no intention of using this as a weapon against him. “Now, I ain’t no expert when it comes to heats, but I gotta ask, won’t it be worse vanishing off to have it some place unfamiliar?”

Hanzo finally swats his hand away, but it’s weak. He sets aside his tea which has started to go cold. “Perhaps,” Hanzo allows, and then, slightly warier, “but it may be worse to go through a heat alone in … such a crowded place.”

Jesse takes his hat off and runs his hand through his hair. “And going through it alone in some skeevy motel somewhere is going to be much better?”

“I will be … I do not…” Hanzo trails off, makes a displeased sound and pinches the bridge of his nose. “It will be less stressful,” he says carefully after a moment, “to go through with it in complete solitude rather than alone in familiarity like this.”

It clicks for Jesse then what Hanzo is to proud to admit.

A heat is a vulnerable enough time for an omega, let alone for somebody as proud as Hanzo Shimada. And Hanzo worries about his control, about his image. About what being half out of his mind and vulnerable in a place he’s familiar with might result in.

Jesse’s gut teeters, deeply unsettled and much too aware of Hanzo’s growing distress. He struggles to find his own words. “You know,” he says, “heats aren’t so taboo as they once were… There ain’t nobody saying you gotta go it alone.”

Hanzo’s head shoots up. There’s silence for a moment as they stare at each other. Jesse determinedly does not back down.

“What is it you are implying?” Hanzo asks after a second.

“I ain’t implying nothing,” Jesse says firmly. “I’m saying that it’s not the early 2000’s, Hanzo, and it ain’t so unusual to spend a heat with a friend for the ease of it. Or a stranger, even, if that’s what you’d prefer.”

Even as he says that, Jesse is instantly aware that it’s not an option. Hanzo does not trust easy, and there is not a bone in his body that would ever allow a stranger even close to him during a heat, let alone take one as a partner. For some people, there’s comfort in that lack of connection; for Hanzo, there’s only a threat.

He’d put an arrow between their eyes before they even lifted a finger.

A friend though - that’s not a bad idea if Jesse does say so himself.

Hanzo dismisses that last suggestion without even acknowledging it and instead asks, more wry than anything else, “Do you imagine that I have a lot of alpha friends willing to… endure this for me?”

“With you,” Jesse corrects automatically. “A heat’s something you do _with_ somebody, not for them.” The next sentence comes out of Jesse’s mouth without a single thought involved, which has always gotten him knee deep in more trouble than he can contain. “And shit sugar, I’m an alpha and I can tell you right now; I doubt it’d be much of a hardship to spend a week rolling around in bed with you.”

They freeze at the exact same time, but Jesse had _meant_ it even if he hadn’t precisely meant to _say it_ and he ain’t backing down now.

The sun has set while they’ve been sitting out here, and sitting in the shadows like this is starting to get cold. Jesse can already feel the stiffness of it in the joints of his metal fingers, but he sits still as rock staring at Hanzo as Hanzo stares at him.

After a second Hanzo’s eyes narrow and he say, voice perfectly measured, “Are you volunteering?”       

This has gotten way out of hand, but Jesse isn’t the kind of guy to go back on his word especially when those words were the gods honest truth.

“Yeah,” he says after a moment longer of silence, “yeah I am.”

Hanzo considers him for a second, and Jesse had worried he might be repulsed, or even worse, _laugh_ at him for it, but Hanzo only looks thoughtful. Jesse does his best to present a respectable front even though he thinks he’s still got coffee in his stubble.

“You’re serious,” Hanzo says after a second.

Jesse gives him a grin that’s only slightly nervous. “Ain’t never not serious with you, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me that,” Hanzo says, but it’s a thoughtless, automatic response. He leans forward, rests his arms on his knees and then glances away, back out at the shapeless dark shadows of the base. “Are you sure this is an offer you’re willing to make?”

There’s a lot of embarrassing confessions Jesse could answer that with, but he thinks he’s had enough of that for one evening. “I mean what I said.”

Hanzo hums and then, swiftly and unannounced, gets to his feet. Jesse blinks up at him, thrown.

“I … appreciate the offer.”

Jesse’s heart sinks even though he knows he should know better. “But no?”

Hanzo stares at him. His eyes are very bright out here like this. “If you are earnest about this,” Hanzo says, “then I will consider it, if you will allow me the time to think. What I mean is that whatever the answer is, I am still grateful that you have offered.”

Jesse opens his mouth, thinks for a second, and then closes it. He doesn’t know what to say to that. Hanzo always steals his words from him before they can even leave his lips. It’s been months now, and Jesse still isn’t used to the way Hanzo can shut him up with the power of his sheer sincerity alone.

Hanzo, perhaps noticing his speechlessness, smiles at him. It has more tooth to it than usual, more a smirk than it is a grin. He reaches out and places a hand on Jesse’s cheek and the warmth of it sends a shock spiralling down his spine like lightning.

“Thank you for your time tonight,” Hanzo says.

Jesse stares up at him.

Hanzo’s smile widens. “I will see you in the morning for breakfast.”

“Breakfast,” Jesse agrees weakly.

“Goodnight, McCree.”

Hanzo’s fingers trail off his face and Jesse barely manages to turn and watch as Hanzo vanishes off the edge of the roof, climbing the smooth walls down with terrifying grace. Hanzo doesn’t even pause to look back as he returns to the base.

Jesse stays on the roof for long enough that his joints all but freeze solid. Hanzo’s smile, the rough tips of his fingers, refuse to leave him alone.

“Ah,” he says after what feels like hours, warm all over even though the chill is cutting him to the bone, “ _shit.”_

 


	2. Chapter 2

Hanzo is waiting for him in the kitchen the next morning, already setting Jesse’s mug down in front of his favourite chair and his own tea steaming in one hand. He gives no indication at all that he’s thinking about the night previous, and Jesse takes his lead and sits down beside him without a word.

Now that he’s aware of what’s happening however, he can’t help but notice all the little hints and wonder at how he managed to miss all of them.

Hanzo has always smelt nice, appealed to Jesse at a level that exceedes human standard, but now it’s like… every single one of his senses is fixated on it. He’s aware of every little move he makes, the small changes in his expression, the way he sits near enough for their elbows to knock.

Jesse had thought the way he’s been paying attention to Hanzo with a laser focus lately had been a _him_ thing; it hadn’t even occurred to him it might be an alpha thing. Hanzo was right. He was as dense as a brick.

Still, Jesse follows his lead, keeps the conversation light and essentially meaningless, tries not to be too obvious in the way he leans into Hanzo’s side or the way he sniffs when he comes in too close. Hanzo does him them both the dignity of ignoring it, because he’s a better sport than most people give him credit for.

They’re deep in some kind of argument about marksmanship that Jesse isn’t entirely sure he’s winning when Genji comes into the kitchen, two empty mugs in his hands as he heads for the sink.

“Brother,” Genji says. A meaningful pause and then, slightly smug sounding, “Jesse.”

Hanzo shoots him a warning look. Jesse isn’t entirely sure if he’s missing part of a conversation here or if it’s just the brothers being vaguely psychic again. For all that their past is a complicated and painful thing between the both of them, they operate on a wave length that the rest of them can barely seem to touch most of the time.

“Howdy,” Jesse greets, raising his mug at him all friendly like.

Genji nods at him, sits the mugs down in the sink with a little _clink_ and says, “Mercy was looking for you, brother.”

Hanzo grunts sourly and gives no indication he plans on getting up.

Genji gives him a few seconds and then adds, “It takes a brave man to keep her waiting. Or a foolish one.”

Hanzo is too proud of a person to roll his eyes like a child, but the sigh he gives as he drains the last of his tea gets his point across sufficiently. He gets to his feet and briefly brushes a hand over Jesse’s shoulder. The spark of warmth it sends through him is largely imaginary but no less exhilarating.

“I’ll see you in the range later,” Hanzo says, even though they hadn’t exactly made plans for it.

“Sure thing, sugar,” Jesse agrees amicably. “Now you best see what Ange wants before she drags you to the infirmary herself. That woman’s got more upper body strength than you’d think.”

Hanzo hums, squeezes his shoulder, and then flitters out of the kitchen before Jesse can say anything else.

It’s just Genji and Jesse now, and Genji is paying for too much attention to the mugs he’s slowly rinsing in the sink to come off as anything approaching genuine. His back is to Jesse and his faceplate is down, but Jesse gets the impression that he’s grinning.

For all that the years have calmed Genji down, he has not changed as a person.

Jesse leans back in his chair with a loud _creak_. “Alright,” he announces, gesturing at him. “Get it out of your system now before you implode from the pressure.”

Genji doesn’t even pretend at nonchalance, just shuts the tap off and turns around quickly. “You asked my brother to mate with you,” he says, and Jesse can’t tell if he sounds impressed or if he’s laughing at him. Knowing Genji, it could be both.

“Don’t the two of you have any secrets?” Jesse grouses.

“We try not to,” Genji says immediately. “Historically, secrets have gone fairly poorly for us.” He pauses for a second and then adds, softer this time, “It does not help, I think, that Hanzo is still struggling to open up to the rest of the team. That leaves him with few confidants as is.”

“He’s got me.”

“Yes,” Genji says patiently. “And I’m sure he’d love to gossip about this situation with you - if you weren’t the person involved.”

Jesse opens his mouth, thinks, and closes it again. Genji does not say it, but he can very clearly hear the silent _you idiot_ tacked on the end there.

“Look,” Genji says, crossing the room and sinking into Hanzo’s vacated seat, “I am not going to tease you.”

“Oh, really?” Jesse asks dryly.

“Much,” Genji amends. “Mostly, I’m just looking out for both of your best interests. The two of you are some of the most important people in my life, and I do not wish for this to go badly.”

Jesse can concede to that. He can’t imagine how awkward it might be for Genji if something happened between the two of them. Being caught between your brother and your best friend isn’t a position he thinks many people would be envious of.

“I didn’t ask him to be my mate,” Jesse eventually relents, sinking down in his seat. He tips his hat down over his face, because it seems awful unfair that Genji gets to read his face like this when he’s a blank book. “I just… offered him some company. Makes no sense that he’s gotta suffer through his heat like that when he’s got somebody perfectly willing to lend a hand.”

“Lend a hand, huh?” Genji’s repeats. “Is that what we’re calling it these days?”

“Do you really wanna talk about the specifics of the things I’d like to do to your brother?” Jesse counters.

Genji gives a full body shudder. “No,” he says firmly. “Absolutely not. The details of your agreement can stay between the two of you.”

Jesse snorts. “I thought so.”

The room dips into silence for a second, and Jesse is just beginning to contemplate draining the rest of his coffee and heading out before Genji gets to the teasing part of this equation when Genji says, “I just want you to be sure you know what you’re doing here, Jesse.”

Jesse frowns. “I don’t know why ya’ll think I don’t know what I’m offering. I _am_ an alpha; I’m not entirely clueless about what’s involved here and it sure as hell ain’t rocket science.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Genji says even though Jesse isn’t entirely sure he _does_ know it. “I am … concerned, perhaps, of the position you might put my brother in if you decide to pull away.”

Jesse gives him an incredulous look. “Are you saying you don’t trust me to keep to my word?”

Genji stares at him levelly. “Hanzo does not trust easily,” he says, which is not, precisely, what Jesse asked.

“I’m aware,” Jesse says. “Which is why you should give him credit where it’s due; if Hanzo’s found fit to place that trust in me, then I must have damn well earnt it, don’t you think?”

They stare at each other for a second, and it occurs to Jesse to wonder if they might be fighting now. It hadn’t felt like it when the conversation had started, and he doesn’t have enough experience with this kind of bickering to be sure.

For Jesse fights usually went bloody pretty quickly. It’s a strange novelty to have this kind of discussion born of mutual worry rather than violence.

Genji’s stares him down for a long moment that ticks sluggishly into minutes. Jesse stares impassively back, unwilling to be the one to back down first even if Genji did have the unfair advantage of not having to blink every ten seconds or so.

Eventually though, Genji relaxes a bit, shoulders dropping. He tilts his head to the side just so, the way he does when he’s smiling, and leans forward to put a friendly hand on Jesse’s shoulder.

“Of course, Jesse. Your confidence does you credit.”

Jesse’s not real sure how to take that one. “Thank you?” He hazards.

It appears to be the right response because Genji gets to his feet, dropping his hand away. “I am pleased for the both of you,” he announces. “And now that I’ve fulfilled my brotherly interrogation duties, I want to establish that I never want to know about anything that does or doesn’t happen between the two of you again.”

“That’s fair,” Jesse agrees, getting to his feet too. He stretches, wincing as he joints pop something fierce. Sometimes he feels so incredibly old standing beside Genji and he has to remind himself that Genji’s eternal youthfulness isn’t entirely the gift it seems.

“Go gentle on him in the shooting range,” Genji says.

“Not a chance in hell,” Jesse says cheerfully, whirling around and heading off to find Hanzo.

Behind him he hears Genji laughing.

.

The infirmary is empty when he arrives. He finds a note on Mercy’s office door that says she’s having a nap, and unless somebody is dying they might want to try Lucio or Ana first.

Jesse leaves without bothering her. He’s lost enough body parts as it is.

The Gibraltar base is obscenely large, and it takes some aimless wandering before he hits upon Hanzo’s scent, following it down the corridors to one of the big, repurposed rec rooms that is more storage crates than furniture.

Hanzo’s sitting on one of the sofas, legs tucked underneath him. Jesse can smell the bitter tang of his tea in the air, although he’s not entirely sure how Hanzo acquired yet another cup between the kitchen and here. He’s starting to wonder if it’s something that should concern him.

He takes a few steps closer, intending to call out, only to notice at the last second that there’s somebody on the sofa beside him. From the doorway Jesse can’t see anything but long, dark hair and he’s not familiar enough with the scent to place it. They’re sitting close though, closer than Hanzo usually lets people get, and talking quietly with one another.

Jesse firmly reminds himself that the possessive feeling that shudders in his gut is both misplaced and unwanted. His biology does not define him.

He stands for a second, watching, but Hanzo seems relaxed. He’s not smiling because that’s just not the kind of expression his face is inclined to make, but he seems at ease, as happy as he ever is.

He gives them a moment before he announces himself, walking forward with just enough force that the spurs on his boot chatter against the battered floorboards. “So this is where you got off to,” Jesse says as he rounds the couch, one hand skating along the back and coming to rest behind Hanzo’s shoulders. Hanzo leans against it, the bare skin at the nape of his neck brushing against Jesse’s knuckles.

Hanzo does not look surprised to see him when he looks up and he gives Jesse a welcoming nod. “I was hardly hiding,” he says. “And if I were, I promise that you certainly wouldn’t find me so quickly.”

Jesse does not doubt it. It’s a pretty established fact in Overwatch that if Hanzo is missing and you want a chat, the fastest way to find him is to seek out his brother. Failing that, it’s better just to wait until _he_ finds _you_.

“Thought you said something about going shooting,” Jesse says instead, before darting a sneaky glance around Hanzo only to blink in surprise.

Satya regards him coolly, and like this Jesse sees she has one hand on Hanzo’s knee. He’s not entirely sure how he missed it before. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her touch anybody so casually, wasn’t even _aware_ that the two of them were friends.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he says, a little awkwardly, making a conscious effort to seem like he hadn’t noticed their closeness.

“McCree,” she says, and Jesse tries to convince himself the iciness in her voice is more to do with the fact she’s not so great with people and has nothing at all to do with how she may feel about him.

Her attention turns back to Hanzo. “I enjoyed our conversation,” she says, rather matter of fact. “You may seek me out if you wish to talk again.”

“I look forward to learning more about your theories of hard light construction,” Hanzo agrees.

Satya doesn’t quite smile, but she does look more pleased than Jesse has seen her. She withdraws her hand unselfconsciously and gets to her feet, brushing out the creases in her dress. She gives Jesse one last nod before breezing out of the room without a backward glance.

Jesse can’t help but admire her as she goes. It’s awe inspiring sometimes just how many attractive, intelligent, and downright terrifying people Overwatch has gathered together under one roof. Jesse thinks that the lot of them could take over the world instead of saving it if they were so inclined.

Hanzo pats the empty cushions beside him and Jesse steps forward to sink into them automatically, almost hardwired at this point to accept any and all invitation Hanzo issues him.

“I didn’t know the two you were close.”

Hanzo shrugs, cradling his mug nearer. “We’re the only two omegas on the base,” he says. “It is… refreshing, on occasion, not to be alone.”

Jesse blinks, craning his head to look through the doorway she’d vanished out of.

Hanzo gives him a pitying look. “Don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed.”

“No,” Jesse says, snapping back around. “Of course I knew she was an omega. I just … forgot, I suppose.”

“I thought the defining aspects of an alpha was an incredible sensory awareness,” Hanzo observes. “But the longer I’ve come to know you, the more I doubt it.”

Jesse wonders if he should be offended, but just settles for giving Hanzo his best disarming grin. “I got better things to do than sniff my way around the base.”

Hanzo snorts, and then, before Jesse can even reply, settles back against the arm of the couch and slings his heavy legs onto Jesse’s lap. Jesse freezes, hands hovering in the air. Hanzo raises an eyebrow imperiously, daring Jesse to make a comment or to push them off, perhaps.

It’s a hilarious thought. Jesse can’t ever remember objecting to touching Hanzo, even if his legs really are damn heavy and he thinks he can feel one of the rivets pressing into his thigh hard enough to bruise. He settles his hands cautiously and Hanzo makes a noise that isn’t _quite_ a sigh and sips at his tea.

Jesse lets the silence hold for a second, gently skating his thumb over the metal of Hanzo’s ankles even though he’s fairly sure that Hanzo can’t feel it. Sensation in his own metal fingertips is usually dull at best, and Hanzo’s prosthetics aren’t all that different. There are just some nerve endings that science can’t truly replicate.

Eventually, he can’t quite hold himself back, and says, “You two were sitting awful close.”

He’s not jealous, not really, because the two of them had looked comfortable more than intimate and Jesse hadn’t smelt anything approaching arousal in the air, but he’s… curious. His senses might be as dull as mud, but Jesse’s mind is sharp enough to make up for it.

Hanzo shoots him an amused look. “You may have noticed that I’ve been … tactile lately.” He shifts one of his legs rather pointedly, and Jesse does his best not to wince as it digs at his knee. The last thing he wants is for Hanzo to take that as his cue to remove them.

“It might have come to mind,” Jesse agrees.

Hanzo taps his fingertips against his mug. “An oncoming heat makes us jumpy. Unsettled.” That’s Hanzo’s way of saying _in need of comfort_ without quite admitting to such a human weakness. “Satya is perhaps the only person on base who understands what that’s like.” Hanzo hesitates for a second before he adds, “And one of the few people I can stand to be close to like this.”

Jesse has a foggy understand of the particularities that an omega goes through in the leadup to heat at best, but he can guess that if Hanzo is usually as prickly as your average cactus, his heat only worsens that tenfold.

“So what you’re saying,” Jesse says cheerfully, giving Hanzo’s legs a friendly shake, “is that I make it onto your super exclusive approval list.”

“It is bad form to fish for compliments,” Hanzo says warningly and Jesse gives him his sweetest smile.

“Ain’t much need for fishing when you’re all curled up on me like a kitten, sweetheart.” That might have been the wrong thing to say though, because Hanzo’s immediate reaction is to try and draw his legs back. Jesse clamps down on them quicker though, gives Hanzo a pleading look, and Hanzo sighs and relents.

“I knew nothing good could come of encouraging your behaviour.”

“Doesn’t take much to encourage me,” Jesse laughs.

Hanzo doesn’t answer but the edge of his lips quirks just that tiniest bit. Jesse is proud of himself.

They settle quietly for a moment, and Jesse allows his hands to skate up a bit further to where the metal of Hanzo’s legs gives way to flesh. He has more than enough familiarity with the ache that can grow between that joining, and he does his best to work the tenseness out from beneath Hanzo’s skin.

Hanzo makes a soft sort of noise, sips at his tea and then leans forward to place the empty mug on the floor before easing back into the couch. He looks content, and Jesse wonders how much longer it’ll take for that contentedness to turn to drowsiness. The idea of Hanzo trusting him enough to fall asleep like this, of the two of them sprawled together on the couch for anybody to see, is a heady sort of feeling.

 _Restraint,_ Jesse reminds himself firmly. _Don’t ask more from him than he’s offered to give._

Hanzo stirs underneath his hands and it’s only then Jesse realizes his fingers have stilled. He starts back up again with an apologetic squeeze to Hanzo’s knee.

After a second Hanzo says, “I thought about what you offered yesterday.”

Jesse very carefully does not freeze, keeps his hands busy and his face impassive. “Genji said you’d mentioned it to him.”

Hanzo sigh is both irritated and fond. “I had a feeling he would not keep that between us.”

“For a guy who’s made a career out of being so zen over the past decade, he’s certainly exceptionally chatty,” Jesse agrees. That pulls a faint smile out of Hanzo. It’s a flickering sort of thing, gone almost as quickly as it comes. Jesse pushes his thumb into a stubborn knot in Hanzo’s thigh. “Did you reach an outcome of all that thinking?”

Hanzo’s fingers tap at the arm of the sofa. “Does the offer still stand?”

“Shit, sugar, the offer stands for as long as you need it to,” Jesse assures him. “Ain’t no need to rush a reply.”

“I’m not rushing,” Hanzo says. “You…” He clears his throat uncomfortably, which is hilarious when he’s got his legs tossed over Jesse’s like it’s his right. Hanzo can get formal about the oddest things at times. It’s as endearing as it is baffling. “You have been nothing but respectful about this situation. I don’t want you to feel like you need to go above and beyond merely for the sake of our friendship.”

Jesse does his best not to let a slightly maniacal grin slip. It’s sweet, he supposes, that Hanzo is this ignorant about the effect he has on him. It’s on the tip of tongue to say as much, but Jesse tamps it down with a concentrated effort.

How he feels has no real place in this discussion outside of establishing consent. What he’s offered Hanzo is based in their friendship and trust. Sure, attraction has its place, because this isn’t the kind of offer one makes without at least a little bit of interest from both sides but it’s… an arrangement. Not a relationship.

Hanzo needs help and Jesse is more than willing to give it. Jesse isn’t going to burden him with anything like _feelings_ and _commitment_ when Hanzo hasn’t asked for it, when Hanzo isn’t in a place to make that choice.

Instead he simply says, “I’m not.”

Hanzo studies him for a second, frowning, but he must find assurance somewhere in the honest lines of Jesse’s face because he relaxes after all of a second.

“If you’re sure about this,” Hanzo says, “then yes. Yes, I would - I would like you to join me for my heat.”

Jesse’s only human. Something sparks in his gut, burns its way through his veins. He does his best not to let his sheer giddiness show on his face, but something must slip through because Hanzo snort and reaches out to gently urge Jesse’s face away from him.

“Do not look at me with that expression.”

Jesse can’t stop his grin even as he stares at one of the blank walls. Hanzo’s fingers linger on his chin. “What expression? There’s no expression. I’m not looking at you like anything.”

“Oh, really?” Hanzo says dryly. “My mistake.” His hand drops away. “You realize that this will mean you can’t take that mission up North you were interested in?”

“Not a problem,” Jesse assures him warmly. “I’m sure we can trust Genji to survive one mission on his own.”

Hanzo makes an unsure noise. “Perhaps Zenyatta can be convinced to accompany him.”

“I’m fairly sure he wouldn’t consider it a hardship,” Jesse agrees. “Although, I know Angela had been looking forward to going off base again.”

Hanzo shifts uncomfortably. “Doctor Ziegler has… elected to stay at the base until my heat passes,” he says. “Just in case any complications arise.”

That makes Jesse pause for a second. He doesn’t have much hands-on experience with heats himself, but he didn’t think they were traditionally a dangerous sort of affair. Uncomfortable, maybe. Intense, absolutely. But rarely _dangerous_.

“Are there _likely_ to be complications?” He asks, trying to keep his voice light. Hanzo looks cagey all of a sudden, uncomfortable in a way that lets Jesse know that this is not a discussion he feels like participating in right at this second. He changes track quickly and instead asks, “How much time do we have before it kicks in, do you think?”

Hanzo looks immensely grateful for the topic change. “A few days at most, I think.” He grimaces. “The past couple of days have been fairly uncomfortable.”

Jesse can work with that.

Gently, he pushes Hanzo’s legs off his lap and gets to his feet. He holds a hand out and after a moment of staring Hanzo takes it and allows himself to be hauled off the sofa. “I’m assuming you want to spend it in your room?”

“Your quarters will be fine if you -.”

“Hanzo,” Jesse says firmly. “You’re running the show on this one. We’re going to spend it wherever you’re going to be most comfortable.”

Hanzo blinks at him and then, a little hesitatingly, says, “Yes. I think I’d… feel more at ease in my quarters.”

Jesse reaches out and runs a soothing hand up and down Hanzo’s arm, grinning. “See? Not so hard is it.” Hanzo’s hand is still slightly tangled with his own and he uses it to pull him along. “Now, I’m not an expert but I think now would be as good a time as any to start making arrangements.”

“Arrangements?” Hanzo repeats drily, allowing Jess to drag him forward.

“Spending a week locked in your room seems like the kind of thing one might want to prepare for,” Jesse says. “Food, water. Maybe some clothes so I don’t spend the _whole_ time walking around your place naked.”

It might be his imagination but Hanzo doesn’t look entirely bothered about that idea. Could just be the oncoming heat at this point though, so Jesse doesn’t allow that look to linger.

Time off too, Jesse thinks, which is going to be a fun. Just imagining the expression on Winston’s face when Jesse has to explain why his vacation is overlapping with Hanzo’s is enough to make him wince.

For now though -

“Come on, sweetheart,” Jesse says with his best grin, “time for me to move in.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for all the comments on the last chapter! this is both my first overwatch fic and my first omegaverse fic; i'd be lying if i said i wasn't nervous about it all. i hope the second chapter has done justice to your expectations, and i'm psyched to keep working on this if people continue to be interested. 
> 
> i forgot to mention last chapter, but you may find me as glenflower over on tumblr if you wanna drop by for whatever reason!
> 
>  
> 
> [art by the amazing bunbrigadeart on tumblr!](https://bunbrigadeart.tumblr.com/post/163546560662/fancy-seeing-you-here-i-have-been-smitten-by)


	3. Chapter 3

Asking for leave is exactly as awkward as Jesse expects it to be. He doesn’t even have to say anything, the look on Winston’s face is enough.

“Shall I assume,” Winston says, “that Hanzo won’t be leaving the base anymore?”

“Um,” Jesse says, “that’s a safe bet, I’d reckon.”

“And the both of you have … talked with Mercy?”

Jesse’s nearly forty. He’s far too old to be getting the beginnings of a safe sex talk from a sentient gorilla who’s also his boss.

“It’s all sorted,” Jesse says, because this is a conversation he wants to cut off before it can really gain momentum. “Ain’t nothing to worry about. Hanzo and I can take care of ourselves. We’ll be back right as rain in a week, boss.”

Winston clears his throat awkwardly and shuffles about some papers. Possibly Winston is as eager for this conversation as Jesse is. He’d wager money on the fact Winston doesn’t even really understand the way this alpha, beta, omega nonsense works for humans anyway.

“Alright,” Winston says. “Good. It’s all fine. You two enjoy your leave, then.”

The look on his face as he seems to register the implications of that last sentence is hilarious enough that it wipes out any and all of Jesse’s lingering awkwardness. He gives Winston a smarmy wink. “We plan on it, boss,” he says, and swaggers away riding high on Winston’s mortification.

Hanzo is waiting for him around the corner and he gives Jesse a deeply unimpressed look. “You could put more effort into not embarrassing everybody involved in this fiasco.”

“You heard all that, did ya’?” Jesse grins, completely unrepentant. He bumps Hanzo’s shoulder as he passes and urges him back down the hall towards his room. “Boss-man was the one saying the embarrassing things, I was just the fool agreeing with him.”

Hanzo gives a rather put-upon sigh, poorly attempting to conceal a smile. The sight of it fills Jesse right to the brim with all sort of warm and fuzzy feelings.

If making Hanzo grin is usually enough to make him giddy, getting Hanzo to smile when the both of them are overflowing with hormones is a bit like taking a hit of cocaine. Jesse has a very real worry that he might come out of this whole thing entirely too addicted to it.

He tries to stuff down the slightly overwhelming worry that he’s getting in over his head and waits as Hanzo unlocks his door with a quick tap at the keypad next to it. Hanzo steps back and allows him in first, like a gentleman, and Jesse takes care to tip his hat as he passes by just to hear the irritated huff Hanzo gives.

Jesse had settled his things in the day previous but it’s still odd to see a change of clothes sitting atop Hanzo’s dresser and his gun cleaning kit tucked in the corner where Hanzo keeps a spare quiver and some strings.

For all that their friendship has thrived over the past couple of months, Jesse had never been in Hanzo’s room before this. If he’d stopped to think about it, Jesse would have put money on Hanzo being the kind of guy who used his room for sleeping and little else.

Turns out he would have been wrong. Hanzo’s room is … well, decorated might be a stretch, but it’s far from bare. There are papers on the walls, soft map sketches and beautiful calligraphy that Jesse can’t make heads or tails of. A fancy looking traditional tea set sits on one of the shelves beside a vase with a sprig of cherry blossoms in it.

Reminders of home, Jesse guesses. He’d never had much of one, but Hanzo had spent many years of his life locked up in Hanamura. In some ways, it was a prison, but even a prison settled in your bones if you were trapped there long enough.

There’s a photo tucked right in the corner of Hanzo’s desk where it’s not immediately obvious from the door. Jesse does his best not to pay it attention because the flash of bright green hair and twin, carefree smiles makes his heart hurt in a way that does neither of them any favours.

Hanzo shoulders past to lean Storm bow in a corner, stripping off the glove and armguard he sometimes uses while training and setting them beside it gently. Jesse can’t help but smile at the thoughtless care Hanzo gives it.

“I can’t get over how nice your digs are,” Jesse observes, swaggering forward slowly and giving the room one more appreciative look over.

Hanzo turns around and glances at him, less than impressed. “ _Nice digs?_ ” He echoes. Jesse’s got to admit it does sound awful strange coming off his tongue like that.

“I stand by what I said,” he says with a grin. He pauses for a second before reaching a hand out, broadcasting his intention clearly. Hanzo lets Jesse take his hand with nothing more than a quirk of his brow and pull him in a step or two closer.

Hanzo’s not entirely comfortable with it Jesse can tell, but he thinks it’d be better to get a head start on chipping away at the newness of this thing between them before Hanzo’s heat hits in full and they’re left floundering.

“How you feeling?” He asks, rubbing a hand over Hanzo’s arm. “You doing alright?”

The look Hanzo gives him could strip paint from a wall. Jesse must be all sorts of crazy to find it endearing regardless. “I’m going into heat, not dying of a terminal disease,” he says. “I feel much the same as I did when you asked an hour ago, and I anticipate I will feel much the same when you ask again in another.”

Jesse rolls his eyes but when he goes to drop Hanzo’s hand Hanzo gives his fingers a tight squeeze. Not quite a request and not quite a demand. “Can’t help but to check,” Jesse says. He taps a finger to his forehead. “It’s all but instinctual, ya’ know?”

“I imagine I might know a thing or two about instinct,” Hanzo sighs, and finally drops Jesse’s hand and steps away. Jesse fight the urge to reach out and grab at him again, giving Hanzo all the space he wants.

Hanzo crosses the room and fusses a little with his archery gear. Jesse gives him a second before he asks, unable to stop himself, “Do you need anything?”

Hanzo pauses thoughtfully, tapping a finger on the edge of his bow. “Perhaps a bath,” Hanzo says after a moment. “Before the next few days make it… uncomfortable.”

Jesse tucks his thumbs into his belt and nods. “I can understand that, darlin’. I can…” He makes a vague gesture towards the door.

The look Hanzo gives him is deeply amused. “I think that the bath is small, but perhaps not _that_ small, McCree.”

Jesse blinks at him blankly for a second. “I don’t -.” It clicks. “Oh. _Oh_.” He covers up the flustered red in his cheeks by running a hand over his stubble. “You sure about that? You don’t gotta do nothin’ you don’t feel like, sweetheart.”

“I am not much in the habit of doing things I do not want to do,” Hanzo says bluntly and turns and heads for the tiny ensuite without another word. Jesse stares after him, a little admiring and a lot smitten.

Sometimes Hanzo just bowls him over merely by existing. It’s frankly hilarious he hasn’t seen the horrifically charmed look on Jesse’s face by now whenever he so much opens his mouth.

Jesse takes a second to regroup and then swaggers after him, tossing his hat on Hanzo’s bed as he goes and running a hand through his ruffled hair. Overwatch bathrooms are not strictly meant for two men of their size to be comfortably crammed in, but the bath has just enough space if they’re not too fussed about legroom.

Hanzo’s standing by the sink adjusting his hair. He’s shrugged his arms from both sleeves and he gives Jesse a small, satisfied smile when he sees him. Jesse ambles past to start filling the tub, brushing Hanzo’s bare shoulders.

Jesse takes a second to get the temperature right and stands up just as Hanzo turns around. For a second they’re chest to chest and Jesse is a little at a loss whether he should back away or not when Hanzo solves the dilemma for him by sitting down on the edge of the tub.

“Generally,” Hazo says conversationally as he begins to unstrap the attachments that keep his legs in place, “a bath requires that both parties be naked, McCree.”

“Well, if you want me to strip darlin’, all you gotta do is ask,” Jesse says, giving Hanzo his sauciest wink. Hanzo huffs at him but doesn’t look up from what he’s doing.

Jesse folds his serape over the edge of the sink, takes less care in kicking his boots to a jingling heap in the corner and shucking his shirt atop them. When he turns around Hanzo has his prosthetics sitting by the tub. Jesse gestures at them with a raised brow and Hanzo nods. Jesse picks them up and shifts them out of the way too before he trips on them and breaks his fool neck.

When he turns around Hanzo has stripped out of his robe in full and it narrowly misses Jesse as Hanzo tosses it carelessly out of the way. Jesse does his best not to gape, because this is a sight that is going to become intimately familiar to him in the next week, but he’s not entirely successful.

Hanzo naked is a thing to behold. Jesse had sort of always suspected it might be, even if he is perhaps a little biased.

Jesse’s seen a good deal of his skin before, what with the way Hanzo seems to all but flaunt it on the battlefield, but there’s a difference between catching a glimpse of the way his abs and shoulders tense in the midst of a fight and _this_.

(Jesse may also be a little salty that he’s never been able to get a real good look, what with the bullets flying everywhere, but that’s neither here nor there.)

For somebody who’s a good bit shorter than Jesse, he’s almost certain Hanzo’s shoulders are broader, his biceps thicker. It’s not a surprise, really, because Jesse has tried to shoot Hanzo’s bow before and he _knows_ just how much power that draw requires, but it gives him a delighted thrill all the same.

His body hair is sparser than Jesse’s which is more an omega thing than a Hanzo thing, and seeing his tattoo unencumbered is a thing of awe, honestly. Given the miserable history it represents, Jesse wishes he didn’t find it as a beautiful as he does, but it’s a part of Hanzo and Jesse’s could never find any of him terrible.

Jesse could stand here and stare at him all day long, he really could, and it’s a temptation to do just that, to memorize all of this in the highest quality his filthy imagination can manage.

Hanzo gives a satisfied sigh, massaging the slightly red skin his prosthetics had been sitting against all day. Jesse, who is familiar with the sensation, can appreciate that. “Here,” he says, stepping forward and offering Hanzo a hand, “let me make myself useful.”

Hanzo smiles a bit at that and lets Jesse help balance him as he gracefully slides off the edge and into the tub with a soft splash. He gives Jesse’s wrist a grateful squeeze and Jesse smiles a little foolishly, reaching around Hanzo to where there's a small collection of bottles and a battered old jug.

Hanzo sees him and snorts. “Must you?” He asks, but he’s already obediently leaning his head backwards.

“Yeah, darlin’, I really must,” Jesse says with a grin and shuffles closer on his knees. He reaches for Hanzo’s hair, waits a second, and when no protest comes carefully undoes the ribbon holding it above the water. It cascades down his shoulders effortlessly, and Jesse takes great joy in tipping half a jug of warm water over it and watching it go inky black. “Let me take care of you. This is as much for me as it is for you.”

If Hanzo has a response to that it seems to vanish as Jesse gently runs his hands through his hair, taking care that his metal fingers don’t push any harder than his flesh ones. He can see Hanzo’s shoulders relaxing, can feel the way he tilts his head into his hands just that little bit easier.

Jesse goes about washing his hair slowly and gently, working soap from the scalp to the ends and using one hand on Hanzo’s forehead to make sure he doesn’t get any water or soap suds into his eyes when he rinses. It’s not strictly comfortable on his old knees kneeling behind the tub like this, and the water is starting to make his jeans stick at his skin, but right now Jesse is as happy as a clam.

Eventually Jesse sets aside the jug and carefully tucks the wet grey of Hanzo’s hair behind his ear. Hanzo makes a faint, unconscious rumble at that and Jesse is pleased to the bone when he realizes just how comfortable Hanzo is.

“You doing alright, darlin’?”

“Bad form to fish for compliments,” Hanzo reminds him sleepily.

Jesse laughs and, very slowly, leans forward to press his face into the crook of Hanzo’s neck, one hand still in his hair and the other resting on his shoulder. He waits for a second to see what Hanzo does, but he just lets out a sigh and tips his head further to the right, giving Jesse all the room he wants.

Between the implicit trust of that movement and the warm, soft smell of Hanzo, Jesse is starting to feel almost light headed from this whole thing. Jesse may be an alpha, but he’s never done something like this before, doesn’t know how much of the blood pumping furiously in him is because Hanzo’s chosen _him_ to spend his heat with or because Jesse is just desperately smitten.

He skates his nose along the wet skin of Hanzo’s neck, coming to a rest at a spot just below his jaw. There’s a faint splash as Hanzo raises a hand, fingers coming around to tangle in Jesse’s hair. Jesse pauses, waits to see if Hanzo is going to gently push him away, but Hanzo just scrapes his fingernails along Jesse’s scalp.

Jesse closes his eyes and breathes him in. It’s the first time he’s really permitted himself to scent Hanzo like this, and it’s positively overwhelming. He’s always known that Hanzo’s scent is the strangest mix of earth and lightening; the wet grass as the sky crackles in the wake of a storm. Up close though, it’s like an electric shock. Jesse can’t stop breathing him in.

He can smell the heat, too. A hot, urgent kind of thing that makes Hanzo’s skin beneath Jesse’s mouth achingly warm. It’s the growing tension of elastic just waiting for the opportunity to snap, and it’s almost too much. The anticipation of it twists Jesse’s guts into a knot, and he has to pull away, pausing to press a soft kiss to Hanzo’s shoulder.

For a second Jesse tries to breathe past the dizzying feeling of Hanzo in all his senses. He focuses on the sound of the basin tap dripping, the faint hum of the wires in the walls. Between that and Hanzo’s fingers rubbing soothingly in his hair he eventually finds even ground.

“Sorry,” Jesse says hoarsely. He clears his throat. “I got a little… carried away.”

Hanzo’s fingers slip free from his hair, and Jesse thinks that’s a bad sign until Hanzo twists in the tub, lays his arms along the edge and leans his chin against them as he meets Jesse’s gaze. “If I was uncomfortable I would have stopped you,” Hanzo says calmly, and Jesse is baffled by how measured his voice is when Jesse feels like he’s choking.

Jesse’s laugh is very loud in the tiny bathroom. “Shit, sugar, if this is you _before_ your heat I’m almost petrified of how you’re gonna make me feel when the actual thing rolls around.”

Hanzo’s eyes crinkle at the corners, but not in a nice way. “This isn’t just about me,” he says. “If you’re uncomfortable with… losing control or anything of the like, you don’t have to do this. It’s not too late to pull out, McCree.”

The thing is Jesse is fairly certain it _is_. Hanzo’s a day off his heat at most, and the two of them have each other all tangled up in their senses. If Jesse were to back out now, Hanzo’s heat is going to be one hell of a miserable thing. Jesse doesn’t think he’d do much better, honestly. He’d smell Hanzo no matter how far across the base he was.

Still, Hanzo would let him go now without a word, wouldn’t even make Jesse feel guilty over it.

“Trust me when I say leaving is the last thing on my mind,” Jesse says honestly. “Couldn’t even if I wanted to, and believe me, I really _don’t_.”

Hanzo stares at him for a second, trying to seek out any traces of dishonesty in Jesse’s expression. Jesse lets him look his fill because he’s meant every word he’s said thus far, and he’s got nothing to hide.

After a second Hanzo reaches a hand out and sets his fingertips along Jesse’s jaw. Jesse doesn’t move, lets Hanzo draw him in closer and closer until their lips finally brush. Hanzo’s are soft and wet and very warm and Jesse doesn’t have the iron willpower needed to stop himself sighing into the kiss, reaching up and threading his fingers in Hanzo’s hair.

It lasts only a handful of seconds before Hanzo pulls away. Jesse’s not sure what his expression is but it makes Hanzo smile. Reluctantly Jesse allows Hanzo to ease back. “I thought it might be best to try that before I can’t tell your lips for your elbow,” Hanzo says.

“They’re pretty easy to confuse,” Jesse says, even though it feels like his heart is going a mile a minute. “Can’t blame ya’.”

Hanzo snorts. “Now, I must ask, do you always bathe by not even touching the water? It would explain a lot.”

Jesse laughs but gets to his feet with a groan. “Alright, you smart ass. See if I do anything nice for you again.”

He takes a second to fumble his way out of his jeans, kicking them in the corner with the rest of his junk and only stumbling a little. He pauses for a second before deciding _fuck it._ Taking his prosthetic off requires a little finagling, but when the weight of it finally unlatches Jesse can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. He’s gentler when he sets that one down atop his clothes.

When he turns around Hanzo is watching him shamelessly. Jesse tries not to be conscious of the way Hanzo’s eyes skim up and down his skin, lingering for a second longer than is really proper between his legs. Hanzo doesn’t even have the gall to pretend to be subtle about it.

It takes some manoeuvring as Jesse gets into the tub, but eventually Hanzo directs them so that Jesse is against the edge and Hanzo is between his legs. It is admittedly made a little easier when they’re short three limbs, and Jesse allows himself a small grin because very rarely is that something that truly comes in handy.

It’s an incredibly intimate position, and Hanzo hasn’t shown any signs of being shy as he leans his full weight on Jesse’s chest, and Jesse tries to remind himself that this is really only the beginning.

They spend a couple of long moments just silently sitting in the water. Eventually Jesse’s hand finds its way around Hanzo’s midriff and Hanzo links their fingers together over his skin without so much as blinking. Jesse wishes dearly he could see his expression but as that means Hanzo would see his it’s probably for the best.

Just when Jesse is starting to think that they should probably get out before they wrinkle Hanzo shifts a little in his lap and says, “I have some things I need to ask of you.”

Jesse hums a little. “About your heat?”

“Yes,” Hanzo says. “I … I don’t want you to think that I don’t trust you, but -.”

Jesse stops his right there, squeezing his hand. “I keep telling you, darlin’. This is your party here, you make the rules for this one. If I get my knickers in a knot over anything, you’ve got the right to kick me naked and complaining out in the corridor.”

Hanzo snorts a little at that, but he’s still far too tense for Jesse’s liking. “I need you to promise you won’t bite me,” Hanzo says, and he says it so quickly that Jesse thinks this is something he’s been holding in since they started this arrangement. “Even if I ask for it in the moment, no matter what I say.”

Jesse had no plans to. They had been clear at the inception of this that Jesse was here as a friend and not a mate, it wasn’t his place to give Hanzo a bond bite.

“Of course,” he says. “I’ll keep my teeth to myself.”

“No matter what I say,” Hanzo repeats, and there’s an edge to his voice now that wasn’t there before, “you _cannot_ bite me.”

Jesse opens his mouth, thinks, and closes it. He’s not sure why it’s only just occurring to him now, but the hardness in Hanzo’s voice finally makes him realize just how little control Hanzo will have over himself, over the situation, when the heat hits.

Jesse’s never been with an omega in heat before, but he’s heard all the same shit everybody else has. An omega in heat is as close to being helpless as they’ll ever be, their biological imperative chases only one thing and everything else becomes secondary.

Jesse knows the horror stories about alphas taking advantage of that. If Jesse really wanted to bite Hanzo, and there’s going to be a part of him that _will_ , Hanzo would be helpless to stop him.

For somebody like Hanzo, for somebody who has been through a lot of shit in his life, who prides himself on his control and independence, that loss of control would be absolutely _terrifying_.

Jesse’s not entirely sure what to say to that, doesn’t know if he has the words to assuage that kind of terror, but the longer he stays silent the stiffer Hanzo becomes underneath his touch. Eventually he says, “I promise you, I wouldn’t do that. Not just to you, but to _anybody_. Hanzo, if I do anything during this heat that is a deal breaker for you, I’m giving you express permission to break my damn neck because it’d be no less than I deserve.”

It seems to be the right thing to say because the tension bleeds out of Hanzo instantly. “It is not that I think you would, I just -.”

Jesse pulls his hand free and pushes Hanzo’s hair out of his face, smooths it behind his ear. “Hanzo,” he says with utmost affection, “You can make rules without necessarily thinking I’ll break them. I’m not gonna get offended because you chose to _communicate your boundaries_ to me.”

Hanzo’s laugh is quiet, still a little tense but growing less. “You are being far too generous about this whole thing, McCree.”

“I’m really not,” Jesse promises him. “But if you’re worried I’m being too self-sacrificing, I just got one request, if you’re in a mood to grant it.”

“And that is?”

Jesse grins into his neck. “It’d mean an awful lot to me if you’d stop calling me ‘ _McCree’_ when I’m about to spend a week fucking the both of us out of our goddamn brains.”

Hanzo’s laugh this time is loud, unrestrained and genuine. Jesse feels it from his fingertips down to the very tips of his toes.

“You ask a lot of me,” Hanzo says warmly, reaching down to put a hand over the back of Jesse’s palm on his thigh, “but I’m sure I can grant you this one thing, Jesse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if an a/b/o fic takes three chapters to get down to business does that make it a slow build???
> 
> sorry for the slightly longer gap between updates. i've spent the last few days away at a convention, which was a hell of a lot of fun, but kinda put writing on the back-burner. 
> 
> as always, i'm glenflower over on tumblr. i don't respond to a lot of comments because i'm not quite sure what to say to express my gratefulness, but i always try to respond to questions, and i will always respond to messages on tumblr (even if it takes me a while.) 
> 
> thank you so much for all your support! your comments mean the world to me! it's a relief to see people are interested in this even though it's not the typical a/b/o dynamic.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: this chapter contains sex

Jesse wakes up to the feeling of hands skating underneath his shirt and a leg sliding between his. For a second his mind is still too thick with sleep to figure out who’s wormed their way into his bed.

“What -.”

He takes a deep breath in and the scent hits him with all the gentleness of a truck. His eyes fly open and it’s dark as all hell, but his enhanced eyesight paints the room in shades of grey.

Hanzo’s hands on his skin are burning hot and he’s climbed atop Jesse at some point, staring down at him with feverish eyes and flushed skin. His hair is in absolute disarray, hanging over his shoulder and brushing at Jesse’s cheek.

“I think,” Hanzo says, swallowing thickly, “the heat has arrived.”

Jesse can hardly think past Hanzo’s scent and he’s reaching for him without any conscious thought on his part, hands scrambling to pull him in, twisting in his hair and yanking him down to bury his nose in his skin.

There’s no adequate way to describe the way a heat smells on an omega; it’s every good thing rolled into one, a desperate siren call of skin and flesh and warmth. Jesse could breathe this in forever and never be content, and there’s a part of him that knows that’s just the alpha in him talking, but the rest of him wants nothing more than to never leave this bed and Hanzo again.

Jesse rolls them over, pushes Hanzo down into the sheets even as Hanzo’s hands scramble to pull at Jesse’s clothes, helplessly trying to push his shirt up and off even though Jesse has no intention of letting Hanzo go long enough to strip.

“Holy fucking hell, _darlin’_ ,” he says, but it’s more a growl than anything. “I… you…” Jesse loses track of his words because they’re largely unimportant when compared to the way Hanzo has grabbed one of Jesse’s hands and shoved it down the front of his pants, absolutely no preamble at all.

“Touch me,” Hanzo hisses furiously, squirming against the sheets. “Earn your keep, Jesse McCree.”

The noise Jesse makes to that is barely audible. Hanzo still looks half asleep in the mess of his hair and the sleepy squint of his eyes, but his body is anything but. He’s hot and hard in Jesse’s hand, and when he slides his hand down lower he finds him wet to touch. If the thought of it had been overwhelming, feeling him beneath his hand short circuits Jesse’s brain.

 _This can’t be real_ , a very dazed part of Jesse’s mind whispers through the fog, _there is no reality on this earth where you wind up this lucky._

Hanzo’s fingers latch onto Jesse’s arms, pulling him back into the moment effortlessly. “ _Touch me,_ ” he hisses again, back arching and breath coming short and Jesse doesn’t have the willpower or the desire to ever say no to that.

He jerks Hanzo off roughly as he presses him down into the mattress, but he’s careful to be gentle with his metal hand as he tangles it in Hanzo’s hair and tilts his head back against the pillow so he can mouth along his jaw. He makes sure to keep his teeth firmly in his mouth no matter how much he wants to let them catch on his skin.

Hanzo’s making a clear effort to bite back on all the noises trying to slip free from his lips, but it’s a losing battle and when a groan escapes Jesse nearly loses it.

He yanks his hand out from Hanzo’s pants, ignoring the ripped gasp Hanzo lets loose, and instead grabs at his wrists, slamming them down to the mattress and sliding a leg between Hanzo’s. He grinds down immediately, holding him in place as Hanzo bucks against him, swearing and gasping and sweating. He’s so wet that Jesse can feel it through both their pants and he can smell it thick in the air between them.

“This okay, sweetheart?” Jesse wants that to come out sweet and concerned, but it’s a rumble more than anything, his chest too full of the way Hanzo’s heat is slowing driving him crazy. He flexes his fingers against Hanzo’s skin. “You doing alright?”

Hanzo says something largely incoherent, but the way he pushes up against Jesse, moves against him thoughtlessly, is answer enough. Jesse’s so hard that he thinks he might come without even being touched, and his dick aches something fierce, swelling as Hanzo’s smell goes to his head.

He has no idea what time of the night it is, but the base is quiet except for the low static of the electricity buzzing in the walls. The sounds the two of them are making drown everything else out, and Jesse can feel the moment Hanzo tips over the edge, the way he bucks his hips up and grinds his erection against Jesse’s knee.

The sound he makes as he comes will haunt Jesse for years. Forget friction and forget skin; the sound of Hanzo losing himself thanks to Jesse alone is enough to push him that last little bit.

Hanzo purposefully shoves his leg up against Jesse’s groin and the world goes first black and then white. Jesse can practically feel Hanzo’s skin bruising beneath his fingertips, but Hanzo gives no indication it bothers him other than a low, satisfied hum.

When Jesse’s shaking mind finally lets him come back to earth the both of them are panting something fierce. Hanzo’s eyes are half lidded and Jesse’s not entirely sure he’s even present, mentally speaking.

Carefully, he loosens his grip on Hanzo’s wrists and props himself up, reaching out to pat Hanzo lightly on the cheek. “You doing okay, there?”

Hanzo blinks at him sleepily. “We didn’t even get our clothes off,” he observes thickly.

Jesse can’t help but crack a grin. “Well, you did jump me when I was all but dead to the world, darlin’. You can’t blame a man for doing the best he can with what limited resources he’s got available to him.”

Hanzo sighs and pushes weakly at Jesse’s shoulder until Jesse leans back and gives him the space to sit up. Hanzo runs a hand through his hair and adjusts the robe half hanging off his shoulder even though Jesse can tell with a glance that it’s irreparably stretched. He doesn’t even remember doing that.

The air between them stills smells spicy and thick, and he can feel the fact Hanzo’s not even quite soft by the hand he has on his thigh. Hanzo doesn’t seem bothered by it though, and Jesse gets the impression this is as close to lucid as he’s likely to be for a while.

Jesse reaches out to tuck Hanzo’s hair behind his ear and all Hanzo gives him is a mildly irritated swat. “You wanna try to go back to sleep?”

Hanzo shakes his head but offers no explanation.  

Jesse can’t argue with that. He flops down beside Hanzo, dragging him back atop the bed with him and flinging the covers over the both of them. His pants are tacky against his skin, and he highly doubts Hanzo can be anything approaching comfortable, but the idea of getting up to wash off when he knows they’re just going to be sticky again very soon seems like a waste.

“How’s this then,” Jesse proposes, “we just curl up in bed until the second wave hits and see how much cuddling we can get in in the meantime.”

Hanzo snorts, but it’s muffled by the pillow. He shuffles closer to Jesse, pulling one of his arms bossily over his waist and tangling their ankles together even though the ice of his metal legs burns a little. Jesse briefly considers trying to talk Hanzo into taking them off before he winds up bruised and sore, but the effort hardly seems worth it. Hanzo barely seems cognizant of what he’s doing it, but the skin-to-skin contact instantly soothes Jesse on an instinctual level.

Heats are as much about comfort and contact as they are anything else. Over the years the world has done a good job to boiling them down to sex and nothing more. Jesse knows that’s not true. Heats are about intimacy and companionship at their core.

“You’ve had worse ideas,” Hanzo allows.

.

Despite their best intentions, they’re still half asleep, at that border between not quite napping and absolutely not awake, when the second wave rolls in.

Unlike before though, Jesse can smell the minute changes in the air as Hanzo shifts against him slightly, can feel the way the skin of Hanzo’s back is warming beneath his fingers rapidly, can hear the way Hanzo’s breath gains in pitch as he shudders and presses his forehead into Jesse’s shoulder.

Jesse does his best to be soothing as he strokes his fingers gently along the dip of Hanzo’s back but he’s hardly subtle as he presses his face into Hanzo’s hair and scents him.

He smells like the sharp crackle of the ozone and the feeling of having somebody’s legs tossed over your shoulders. Jesse hadn’t even known that was something he had such visceral memories of until this very moment.

Hanzo shivers and groans. “This is very uncomfortable,” he mutters grumpily.

“I can help with that,” Jesse says, and he only smirks a little.

Hanzo pushes weakly at his shoulder in retaliation, but the minute Jesse takes his hand off Hanzo’s back he’s pulled in closer again, Hanzo directing his hands where he wants them without thought. “Don’t,” he says, and then, slightly more uncertain, “please.”

Jesse lets himself be maneuvered around, resumes his stroking and gives Hanzo a second before he breaks the silence.

“What do you want, sweetheart?” Jesse asks, making sure to keep on soothing his hand along Hanzo’s spine. The smell of the heat is getting to him again, and he knows Hanzo can absolutely feel his growing hard-on against his thigh but he does his level best to ignore it. “You gotta tell me what you want me to do here.”

Hanzo squirms a little in his grip and then his hands are at the collar of Jesse’s shirt, pulling him in and pushing him down all at once. For a man with biceps the size of Texas, there’s no real force in Hanzo’s movements. Jesse could easily bat him away if he wanted to.

He doesn’t. He goes more than willingly, slinking down the bed so that he’s got his hands on Hanzo’s hips and his mouth pressed into the soft skin of his stomach. Down here the scent of Hanzo is enough to drive Jesse insane and he humps into the mattress without meaning to. He wants so badly to be gentle but he can feel his fingers sinking into Hanzo’s sides like a brand.

The front of Hanzo’s pants is pitched and wet and Jesse doesn’t pause as he leans forward to mouth along it. Hanzo’s reaction is instantaneous; the hands on Jesse’s shoulders tighten like a vice and a hiss of breath rushes from between his teeth. His hips make a valiant effort to buck up, but Jesse holds them in place easily.

He has to take a moment to centre himself. If that much had gotten such a reaction, Jesse can only imagine what might happen when he presses Hanzo into the sheets and wraps his legs around Jesse’s waist.

“Like this?” He asks, voice rough. “Do you want me to keep going?”

Hanzo says something so unintelligible it’s probably not even English. “Jesse, I sincerely doubt I have any kind of boundaries as I am,” Hanzo says, and when Jesse looks up his eyes are blown to black. “I will let you know if you do something I dislike, but in the meantime, you are an alpha, are you not? Then _do something_.”

A shiver like a livewire goes through Jesse’s spine and he doesn’t make Hanzo ask twice. It’s been awhile since he’s done this and he’s sure his tricks have gotten rusty, but the both of them are damn powder kegs right now and he’s reasonably sure he ain’t gotta do anything fancy to get either of them off.

Jesse sinks his teeth into the waistband of Hanzo’s pants and tugs them down fluidly. The way Hanzo’s nails break through his skin tell him that Jesse probably looked a good deal more graceful than he’d felt.

Hanzo’s dick is hard and red and wet when it bumps against Jesse’s cheek, and between the sight and the scent Jesse has to press his face into Hanzo’s thigh before he comes from sensory overload alone. He wouldn’t be the first alpha to tap out like that, but goddamn if he’s not going to try his damn hardest to resist, both for Hanzo’s sake and his shaky pride.

“Jesse?” Hanzo sounds both amused and breathless.

Jesse sucks in a lungful of air. It tastes the way Hanzo smells. He’s going to cry at this rate. “Give me a second,” he says, and his voice is only slightly strained. “The view down here is enough to kill a man, sweetheart. If I’d known what a danger you’d be to my heart coming into this, I’d have written my last will and testament before climbing into your bed.”

“If you don’t touch me soon, Jesse McCree, I’m going to push you to the floor and take matters into my own hands.”

Now, that’d be a sight Jesse would pay to see one day, but not right now. He places a kiss to the skin of one of Hanzo’s thighs and slides his hand down the other. Hanzo’s sharp intake of breath is all the encouragement Jesse needs, and, before they can both get too overwhelmed, he shuffles down a little, wraps a hand around Hanzo’s dick to hold it steady and goes down.

It’s not the first time Jesse has given a blowjob, but he feels seventeen all over again, more hormones and instincts than thought and care. He can feel Hanzo going to pieces beneath his hands though, so he must be doing something right, and the longer this stretches out the less coherent Jesse becomes.

Hanzo’s hands twist in his hair and he lets out something that is very nearly a shout. Jesse doesn't move an inch, just twists his wrist and holds Hanzo steady as he comes.

Jesse wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist and gives Hanzo a second before he slinks back up, skating his hands along his side. He can feel the slight tremors caught beneath his skin. “How you doing?”

Hanzo drags Jesse down and buries his face in the side of his neck. Up close like this, the tremors are turning to shakes. His breath is hot on Jesse’s ear. “Keep going.”

“You sure you’re up for that?”

Hanzo snorts and grabs one of Jesse’s hands, shoving it back down between his thighs. He hasn’t even gone soft, and Jesse can feel his slick on the back of his hand. Without meaning to, he rolls his knuckles against his opening and Hanzo’s breath catch.

Hanzo’s hands are like claws in Jesse’s shoulders. “ _Now_ ,” he says.

Jesse pulls back, takes Hanzo’s face in his hands, and leans down to kiss him. Hanzo makes an impatient noise against his lips but doesn’t push him away even as he squirms beneath him. The whole room smells like sex and Jesse can see every drop of sweat roll down Hanzo’s skin. “Tell me if you need me to stop,” he says firmly.

“I will not need that,” Hanzo grits out, “but I appreciate the concern. Now, _fuck me_.”

Jesse takes a deep breath in, fists his hands in the sheets, and lets go of the tiny shred of control he’d been clinging to.

Handjobs had been good, blowjobs had been better. But in this moment everything inside of Jesse is going to pieces at the fact that there’s an omega in heat pressed up against him. It’s taken everything Jesse has to keep himself balanced. It is a greater relief than he can ever care to explain to let go of that control.

He leans back and slides his metal hand under Hanzo’s thigh, hoisting it over his shoulder even as the sharp metal of Hanzo’s ankle cuts into his back. He uses his shoulders to nudge his legs apart and Hanzo lets him willingly.

Jesse takes a second to just admire the view while he can; Hanzo still hard and aching after everything Jesse has done to him, the slick that pooled on the sheet beneath him. Jesse slides his fingers against the wetness on Hanzo’s thigh and, slightly delirious, curls his fingers up and in.

Hanzo’s body opens for him eagerly and easily, one finger goes in with nothing more than a groan from Hanzo himself, and the second makes his hips buck. Whatever is going on in Hanzo’s brain right now has rerouted all his pain receptors to pleasure, and the thought makes Jesse rut against the sheets as he slides in a third.

Hanzo’s wet, of course, he’s wet, and he’s loose and he smells _amazing_ and Jesse thinks if his dick wasn’t so hard it hurt he could stay down here fingering those small breathes out of him forever.

Like this though Hanzo doesn’t need much preparation, and it only takes a few long minutes before Jesse’s fingers stretch him effortlessly.

He curls his fingers and Hanzo lets out a strangled yell. Jesse’s gut tightens and he feel like he must be red from the base of his spine to the tips of his ears.

He pulls his fingers free and the sticky sound they make as they slip out is enough to make Jesse curse and swear on its own. He holds the leg Hanzo has over his shoulders steady with one hand as he fumbles with the drawstring of his pants and _finally_ drags them down and over his cock.

Hanzo makes a choked off sort of groan and Jesse looks up just in time to see him toss an arm over his face. He looks as red as Jesse feels and his chest is heaving something fierce. He doesn’t know whether that’s a good sign or not, but he’s too far gone to try for reassurance. Instead, he pauses for a second, uses his free hand to draw Hanzo’s hips closer to his, and waits.

One long second turns into two, turns into three - and then Hanzo says, “ _Don’t stop._ ”

It’s all he needs to hear. Jesse breathes out, shifts Hanzo’s leg more comfortably, and pushes in with agonizing slowness.  

Jesse’s had sex before. He vaguely remembers losing his virginity when he was seventeen and thinking it was the greatest thing to ever happen to him. Turns out he’d been wrong; he could sleep with every eligible bachelor in all the land, and nothing would ever compare to this.

“Oh, fucking hell,” he hisses, leaning forward to press his forehead against Hanzo’s chest as he bucks his hips forward without thought. Hanzo hisses and a hand comes down to tighten in Jesse’s hair. “God darlin’, you have no idea how you feel. It’s…”

Jesse’s words fail him. The furious heat in his gut is blowing up and out until it’s gnawing at his bones. It’s all he can do to rut into Hanzo furiously to keep it from eating him alive, and Hanzo just clings to him, barely biting back small groans and grunts as Jesse presses him into the mattress with all his weight.

He’d known sex with an omega in heat was all encompassing, and he’d always suspected that sex with Hanzo would be _devastating_ \- the combination has left him with nothing but fried brain cells and instinct.

Hanzo’s leg falls off his shoulder, which is probably for the best as Jesse can feel blood trickling down his spine where the metal of Hanzo’s foot had caught at his skin. Jesse takes advantage of the change to thoughtlessly tangle his fingers with Hanzo’s, holding him down and fucking him ruthlessly.

“Don’t stop,” Hanzo whispers furiously, fingers flexing along the back of Jesse’s hand. It sounds damn near like a sob, but Jesse’s too far gone to think about it.

“Wasn’t - _oh fuck_ \- planning on it.”

He makes the mistake of looking down between them and the sight of Hanzo’s thighs parted at his waist, of his dick obscenely red caught between their stomach, is enough to make Jesse’s vision waver. He can feel his knot starting to grow, and he thinks he’s probably got a minute tops before he comes.

He’s barely withdrawing on his thrusts now, just humping into Hanzo endlessly, but it’s working well enough for the both of them because Hanzo chokes on something that sounds like it might have been a groan, freezes in Jesse’s arms, and _comes_.

Jesse can feel Hanzo’s come on his stomach and when he looks up Hanzo’s face looks like he’s in agony, but the good kind, if there is such a thing.

Jesse’s hips stutter to a stop for a second even though the effort makes every bone in his body ache. Hanzo’s eyes open lightening quick and he breaks the hold Jesse has on one of his wrists easily, wrapping his fingers around the back of Jesse’s neck and yanking him down.

“It’s not enough,” he grits out, pushing down on Jesse’s dick with more strength than Jesse thinks he should have left. He looks half delirious and absolutely _gorgeous_. “Keep going - you’ve got to knot me - _don’t stop_.”

That’s it; Jesse’s only human.

“Oh fuck,” he groans. He fumbles a hand down at Hanzo’s thigh and pulls him closer. His knot catches for a second, and Hanzo makes a noise like all his breath is being forced out, and then it’s _in_.

Jesse comes like a freight train. There’s a rush in his ears and he can faintly feel Hanzo’s nails breaking the skin on the back of his neck. There’s a distant part of him that feels Hanzo shudder as he comes one last time but everything is just white noise.

It takes a long moment before the thunderous pounding of his heart eases and Jesse can focus on anything else. Carefully, he let’s go of Hanzo’s wrist. His fingers feel stiff from the force of it and he can see new bruises overlapping with the ones he left there earlier.

“Sorry,” he rasps, and runs a hand through Hanzo’s sweaty hair, pushing it gently off his face. “I - I was a bit rough.”

Hanzo hums a little but his eyes are closed. He’s shaking like a leaf and Jesse is absolutely terrified that he’s done something wrong, that he wasn’t listening carefully enough, that he’d let his instincts -

“I can hear you thinking,” Hanzo says sleepily, unmoving. “And if you ask me if I am alright, I may hit you and that’ll make for a very uncomfortable hour of being locked together.”

Jesse gives a winded laugh. Carefully, he cups Hanzo’s thighs and rolls them over. Hanzo’s eyes flicker open and his nose wrinkles. A pained hiss slips out, and Jesse feels awful, but they’d chosen a pretty poor position to wind up knotted in and the only way either of them are going to be anything approaching comfortable is if Jesse is on his back with Hanzo in his lap.

“Sorry, darlin’,” Jesse says.

Hanzo glares at him but puts his hands on Jesse’s chest to hold steady. The sight of him mounted on Jesse’s lap, cock softening between his wet thighs and hair in his face, is enough to make Jesse’s dick give a valiant effort to come again.

Hanzo groans and readjusts himself slightly. He looks exhausted and bruised but his eyes are clear and he looks as close to content as the situation allows for.

“That was…” Hanzo pauses for a second while he thinks. “Tiring.”

“Thank you,” Jesse says primly, and only laughs as Hanzo pushes at him. He smooths his hands up and down Hanzo’s thighs and he can feel him relaxing against him instantly. “I might have gone with intense. Or possibly _mindblowing_.”

Hanzo snorts and rolls his eyes. “It is a heat, Jesse. Its nature is to be as all-consuming as possible.”

Hanzo shifts again, winces as it pulls a little, and carefully slumps forward on Jesse’s chest. Jesse obligingly runs his fingers through his hair and Hanzo gives a quiet sigh. “Is it always like this?” Jesse wonders aloud.

Hanzo makes a sleepy noise. “I would not know.”

Jesse’s fingers pause. An uneasy feeling is slowly clawing as his comfort. “They’re _your_ heats.” Hanzo does not answer him, but the steady up and down of his chest against Jesse’s tells him he’s still awake. “ _Hanzo_.”

Hanzo stirs just a little bit, turning his cheek against Jesse’s collarbone and letting out a sigh. “I do not wish to talk about it right now.”

“We’ll have to talk about it eventually,” Jesse says. “I’m all for privacy, but you probably shouldn’t be keeping heat related secrets from the person sharing them with you.”

“I’m not,” Hanzo says, and he sounds so honest that Jesse can’t help but believe him instantly. “I … if you want to know, we may talk about it when I’m more awake and not stuck in your lap for the foreseeable future.”

It’s a reasonable enough request and Jesse sighs and relents. He returns to stroking his fingers through Hanzo’s hair again. “In the morning, then.”

“In the morning,” Hanzo agrees, and in the space between one moment and the next he dozes off. Jesse can’t help but marvel he held out for so long. Jesse hadn’t been the one being absolutely wrecked by his hormones, and he’s _exhausted_.

Still, Jesse makes himself comfortable and settles in for a long night of watching Hanzo while he still can.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry that this chapter was later coming out then i'd hoped. i don't write smut often, i am not an accomplished smut writer, and writing my first in depth sex scene for an a/b/o fic of all things kicked my damn ass. all that being said, i hope it wasn't too disappointing, and please know i honestly tried my best.
> 
> additionally, take time out of your day to check out [this frankly beautiful fanart bunbrigadeart on tumblr ](https://bunbrigadeart.tumblr.com/post/163546560662/fancy-seeing-you-here-i-have-been-smitten-by)has drawn for chapter two! i cannot express how awed and grateful i am for this. 


	5. Chapter 5

Jesse wakes up to the sound of the running water.

It takes a moment to lever himself upright, and when he does he realizes he’s alone in the rumpled sheets of the bed. The bathroom door is open and he can faintly make out Hanzo moving about in the shower through the fogged mirror.

There’s still the simmering heat smell in the room, but Hanzo seems to have it under control and Jesse refuses to begrudge him his privacy in the few lucid moments he has. With a jaw cracking yawn he tosses aside the sheets and stumbles out of bed to where Hanzo keeps his fancy tea set and kettle.

By the time Hanzo emerges from the bathroom pink-faced and with a towel around his waist Jesse has a perfectly stewed cup of tea waiting for him. Hanzo accepts it with a faint murmur of thanks and retreats to the bed, huddling up against the pillow and cradling the mug like it’s the only thing keeps him awake.

Jesse turns his back and fusses around with the coffee he’d smuggled in the other day. Hanzo gives an exasperated sigh as the smell of burnt coffee grounds hits his nose.

“Why must you brew it like that?”

Jesse smiles as he stirs his cup and swaggers back over to the bed. He sits down heavily on the mattress and Hanzo wordlessly scoots over so Jesse can claim the warm spot beside him. Jesse’s preference in coffee has been a sticking point between them for as long as they’d shared their mornings. Jesse likes his coffee with the consistency of piping hot tar and Hanzo refuses to look at it let alone share it.

Before Overwatch Jesse had never been in much of a position for nice things. He’d grown up with a communal coffeepot shared with folks who had long burnt out their tastebuds. Late nights and early mornings warming his hands on it as they bickered and laughed is one of the few good memories he has of his Deadlock days and Jesse is in loath to let it go.

“Honey, half the charm is in the fact it’s terrible,” Jesse says.

“The two of you have much in common then,” Hanzo says without batting an eye.

Jesse just grins wider, toasts Hanzo with his mug, and slumps against Hanzo’s invitingly broad shoulders. Hanzo permits it easily, sighing a little as Jesse sets a hand on Hanzo’s knee and begins to smooth his fingers along his skin.

The domestic comfort of it all aches something fierce. There’s a hard knot forming in Jesse’s gut as he considers the fact that a week from now he’ll be back in his own room and his hands will be back to staying safely above Hanzo’s waist.

_Don’t think about it_ , he scolds himself, burning his tongue on a hasty sip of coffee. _Don’t let what’s going to happen down the track ruin what you’ve got now_.

It’s something that is easier to think than it is to believe, but Jesse has long since perfected the art of distraction and he focuses all of his senses on the satisfied, warm way Hanzo smells, the rough scar-torn skin beneath his fingers.

Even with the caffeine slowly working its way into his system Jesse feels like he might just fall back asleep. Dazedly, he asks, “How you feeling?”

Hanzo hum a little. Jesse can hear the tap of his fingernails against his cup. “I have perhaps felt better.”

Jesse clumsily pats his knee. “Anything I can do?”

Hanzo turns his face against Jesse’s shoulder and his laugh is lost in Jesse’s hair. “Something or someone?”

“Your pickup lines are worse than mine.”

“I do not need to pick you up,” Hanzo assures him, “you are already in my bed.”

Jesse grins from ear to ear like a child. “I’m a very useful sorta guy,” he agrees. “I’m a great multitasker.”

“If that’s what you must tell yourself,” Hanzo says serenely, and Jesse does them both the favour of not picking a fight, however good natured it might be. They’re both too tired for any hearty bickering right now and Jesse is content to allow Hanzo his morning tea in peace.

He waits until Hanzo’s half dozing, empty mug in his hands, before he shifts. Gently, he takes it from Hanzo’s lax fingers and sets it to the floor beside his own. Hanzo makes a grateful noise and Jesse settles back against his side. He gives him a full minute before he cautiously asks, “You wanna talk about last night?”

Hanzo stiffens, a barely perceptible pause that Jesse only sees because he’s got better eyes than most men. “Which aspect?”

“Darlin’, you’re far too smart to play dumb convincingly.” Hanzo grimaces and Jesse gently reminds him, “I’ve been real good about not pushing, I reckon.”

Hanzo sighs, looks to the ceiling, and then back at Jesse. “It’s really not as interesting as you’re imagining.”

“I’m less worried about it being interested and more worried about your safety,” Jesse says. “But if you don’t wanna talk about it, I ain’t gonna -.”

“No,” Hanzo says, brushing a hand along his beard nervously. He hesitates for a second before he reaches out to give Jesse’s knee a tiny squeeze. The casual affection makes Jesse’s heart swell big enough to hurt. “It’s … well, I won’t say I’d enjoy talking about it, but with you I can manage.”

Jesse bites back at the smarmy response on his tongue and instead settles an arm around Hanzo’s bare shoulders to drag him down against his side. Hanzo goes willingly enough. “Take your time.”

“It’s really not so bad,” Hanzo repeats. He runs a hand through his hair, realizes belatedly it’s tied up, and lets it drop. “I presented as an omega when I was seventeen.”

Jesse can’t help but frown. “Isn’t that -.”

“Yes,” Hanzo agrees. “It was rather late.” A small smile tugs at his lips. “Genji presented three months before I did, actually. But betas have always had an easier time of it.”

“I find it hard to imagine Genji doing anything easily,” Jesse says just for the laugh Hanzo gives.

“He was very smug,” Hanzo agrees. “He took a lot of pride in disappointing our father.”

“What about you?” Jesse asks. “Was your father -.”

“A little,” Hanzo says. “I cannot blame him for that. To have neither of us his sons present as alpha must have been a blow. An omega for his heir would not have been his first preference, but I was hardly without value.”

Jesse does not quite like the way those words sound coming out of Hanzo’s mouth. “Hanzo -.”

Hanzo shakes his head against Jesse’s shoulder. “It was not so dire as you imagine,” he says. “Omegas are… profitable. Barring fertility issues, they’re the only ones who can have a child born from any union. They make for excellent marriage prospects.”

“I pity the idiot who thinks your only value is in your ‘marriage prospects’.”

Hanzo snorts. “As you should,” he says imperiously. “I may have been the obedient son, but I was not a pushover. I made it clear to my father right away that he could barter away my hand if he so liked - as the eldest son, that had always been his right - but I would not let my seat in the house be usurped. He was amenable to my terms.”

Jesse knows omega rights have come a long way, but it still gives him unspeakable relief to hear that no matter how old-fashioned and ugly Hanzo’s family could be, they weren’t monsters at their core. “Good.”

“You have distracted me,” Hanzo admonishes. “This was not the point I was trying to make.”

“Sorry,” Jesse grins, squeezing his arm around Hanzo’s shoulders. “Continue. The peanut gallery will be quiet now.”

Hanzo scoffs at that. “I can only dream. But what I was trying to say is that my heats have always tended towards the irregular. And before you say anything, I tried every remedy known on the market and many that were not. They refused to cooperate.”

“That… must have been uncomfortable.”

Hanzo sighs. “Deeply. It was an annoyance I could have otherwise done without.”

“But you’ve had them before?” Jesse pushes. “You made it sound like this was your first.”

Hanzo’s eyes flick to him and then away. Suddenly, he seems deeply engrossed in the ceiling. “I have,” he says. “But my last one was over ten years ago.”

Jesse gapes. “ _Ten years ago?_ ”

Hanzo pulls away and tries to sit upright, but Jesse clamps down on him like a vice and refuses to let him squirm free, even though he’s reasonably certain Hanzo could break every single one of his fingers right now if he was so inclined. “I thought heats were a _yearly_ thing?”

“They are,” Hanzo says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “For a regular, comfortable omega. Jesse, I was prone towards heat irregularities since I was a teenager, and heats are awkward things. After I - after what I did to Genji, and being on the run for so many years, I was not in a position where my body felt comfortable enough to experience one.”

Jesse hadn’t known that. Jesse had always assumed that heats were much the same as any other biological imperative; inconsiderate of time and place and completely unstoppable.

“Ten years,” he repeats. “ _Ten years_.”

“Yes,” Hanzo says, finally snapping. He shrugs off Jesse’s arms and this time, sensing a need for space, he lets him go. “I am _aware_.”

“Sorry, sorry. I just - that’s an awful long time.”

Hanzo’s mouth turns down at the corner. He glances at the wall. “I know.”

“What did Angela say?” Jesse asks, before doubling back. “I mean, you _did_ speak to Ange right?”

“Of course I spoke to Doctor Ziegler,” Hanzo says. “I went to her as soon as I realized what the symptoms I were experiencing were. She told me exactly what I already knew; that between my mental health and my lack of stability, my body had refused to go into heat. As it is now, I am as safe and as … content, perhaps, as I have been in years.”

Jesse’s still worried, of course he’s still worried, but to hear that admission from Hanzo’s lips has him grinning like a fool. Yeah, the world is right shitshow right now, and they're part of an illegal organization, and things are hardly _simple -_ but Hanzo feel _happy_. He feels _safe_. He’s in a stable enough environment that his own body has realized it on a biological level.

“Stop smiling like that,” Hanzo sighs.

“Sorry,” Jesse says, even though he really isn’t.

“I knew you would get like this,” Hanzo says. “Don’t read too much into it.”

Jesse holds his hands up. “I’m not, I’m not,” he says, even though he really is.

Hanzo grimaces and pushes at Jesse’s shoulder. “There, that is the ‘big secret’ you were so concerned about. I’m done talking about it now, and you smell terrible. Go shower.”

Jesse allows the abrupt subject change gracefully. Hanzo has never been comfortable with sharing his life, and Jesse feels more than privileged to have been allowed the access he has.

“ _Terrible_? Honey, half of it is _your_ fault.”

Hanzo gives him a look that could cut glass. “You do not see me sprawling about in my own filth.”

“Well now, I’d hardly call what we’ve been doing _filth_ - _.”_

“ _Jesse_.”

Jesse swings his legs off the bed with a big grin. “Alright, alright. I’m going, I’m going.” He pauses for a second to check on Hanzo one last time. “You be alright out here on your own?”

“If I’m being truthful, I think I’ll probably be asleep when you return,” Hanzo admits.

Jesse studies him, and he notices that yeah, Hanzo does look real damn tired. Unsurprising, given the fact his body is all but an imploding amalgamation of chemicals at the moment, but the dark circles growing under his eyes do his handsome face no favours.

“You need me to get anything?” Jesse says. “You should really eat something, now that I think on it.”

“I will,” Hanzo promises unconvincingly around a yawn. “For the moment I just… need some rest.”

“We just woke up.”

“I know,” Hanzo sighs. “Believe me, I will be glad when this whole thing is over if only so I can do something more than sleep and have sex.”

“I’m pretty sure there are plenty of men out there who’d love to do nothing _but_ sleep and have sex,” Jesse says, rubbing Hanzo’s shoulder comfortingly, “but I see your point. Still, the second I’m out of the shower, we’re eating something if I have to cram it down your throat myself.”

Hanzo snorts and Jesse sighs. “Yeah, I’ll admit that came out sounding a little more double entendre than I intended.”

He scoots off the bed and hobbles his way to the bathroom, straightening out the kinks in his back that come from slumping in bed for days on end. Sometimes Jesse forgets just old he’s getting until his body decides to rudely remind him.

Although the bathroom isn’t at all far from where Hanzo is, by the time Jesse turns on the shower he can feel the distance between them like a tug in his gut. It’s uncomfortable but with some effort he can push it to the back of his mind.

_It’s just Hanzo’s heat_ , he reminds himself as the water starts up with a hiss. _It’s just your instincts messing with you. There’s no reason why you two_ have _to be in the same damn room. Give the man his privacy._

Jesse takes a deep breath and slips beneath the water although he leaves the shower curtain open for peace of mind. If he squints through the soap suds and leans forward just right he can make out Hanzo’s legs curled up on the bed. It’s enough of a comfort for now.

He goes slowly, unsure when either of them will have the time and energy to crawl into the bathroom next. He’s just soaping up when he sees movement out of the corner of his eye. He whips around, sending bubbles flying, to see Hanzo standing in the doorway, unsteady on his feet but deeply amused.

“I feel like I should be disturbed by your lack of faith in me,” Hanzo says. “If an assassin had truly broken into my quarters to target you in the shower, they’d have had to fight me first.”

Jesse sighs and relaxes back. “Ain’t a slight on you darlin’, and you know it. You just scared the hell outta me. Besides, thought you were napping?”

Hanzo cracks a smile. “Apologies. I did not mean to. I just…”

He trails off and Jesse notices the frustrated tightening at his jaw, the growing scowl lines in his forehead. “Feeling the distance?”

Hanzo sighs. “I do not mean to impose.”

Jesse snorts and ducks back beneath the water. “Hanzo, it’s hardly an imposition when I’m feeling it to. Not much in the way of seats in here, but you’re welcome to stay.” He wriggles his eyebrows even though Hanzo can’t see them. “Or join me, if you’re feeling adventurous.”

“That sounds like a good way to break both our necks,” Hanzo says dryly. Jesse hears the light tap of Hanzo’s metal feet as he slinks into the bathroom and faintly sees him settle into a lean by the sink. “We are not so young anymore, Jesse.”

Jesse sighs mournfully and scrubs some shampoo through his hair. “Don’t I know it.”

The silence that falls between them is not uncomfortable. Jesse is aware of Hanzo’s presence like an itch in the back of his head. It’s soothing on an instinctual level and Jesse feels a release of tension he hadn’t even realized had been building.

He starts whistling on reflex more than anything. Jesse doesn’t mind the quiet but it gives you too much to think about. Besides, he’s reasonably sure it’d crack a smile out of Hanzo, and it seems to him that he could use a distraction.

It’s an upbeat little thing, something he’d picked up from his various times in Dorado, one of those local tunes that get tossed from one person to the next and on and on. It had stuck with him even when he thought his mind might have been hollowed out of all those pointless, absent reminders.

He’s so caught up in the quiet contentment it takes him a second to realize that the sound of it bouncing around the bathroom tiles isn’t exactly an echo; Hanzo’s whistling along with him too.

Jesse sticks his head out of the shower and squints at him. “I didn’t know you’d been to Dorado.”

Hanzo gives him a blithe look. “The world is a big place,” he is says ambiguously. “Who’s to say I picked it up there.” He pauses, gives Jesse just enough time to consider that he might be being small minded, and then says, “But yes, I have been to Dorado.”

“You sneaky shit,” Jesse says, only a little admiringly.

Hanzo’s smile is small and slightly smug. “To be fair, you’d never _asked_. I was a wanderer for many years Jesse, it is not so hard to believe my feet might take me there.”

“Makes me wonder what else you haven’t shared with me,” Jesse says.

“Another time, perhaps,” Hanzo says, and then, softer, “we are not running short on that at least.”

Jesse feels warm from his toes to his ears. For all that this heat has driven him to be a horny, anxious wreck, it makes him happier than he could ever hope to explain to hear Hanzo drop sentences like that, completely unfazed, unaware of the things he’s doing to Jesse’s poor, delicate heart.

A part of Jesse is worried about what’s going to happen when Hanzo’s heat is over. After having spent this time with him, having done the things they’ve done, he’s not entirely sure how he’ll be able to switch back to their old platonic friendship. He can though, and he will if that’s what Hanzo wants, but this memory will always be a bittersweet ache in his gut

Hanzo though, he says these things without flinching, is sweet and oblivious in turn. Whatever does or does not change at the end of this, Hanzo’s affection for him remains.

And come what may, Jesse can always appreciate that.

“No,” he drawls. “No, We sure ain’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know this chapter is a lil shorter and i hope you guys will bear with me while i get my bearings on this fic. i hope it wasn't too much of a let down after the wait and thank you all again for the lovely comments. as usual, they're what keeps me moving forward. 
> 
> you can find me as glenflower over on tumblr!


	6. Chapter 6

It takes until the third day of Hanzo’s heat for Jesse to come to the realization that Hanzo is still barely eating. He’s furious with himself that he didn’t notice sooner, or didn’t put his foot down hard enough, and furious with Hanzo for not paying attention to his health in the first place.

“Alright,” Jesse says as he hands Hanzo his evening cup of tea, “this has gone on for long enough.”

Hanzo quirks a brow at him. “I can’t precisely control how long my heat lasts.”

“No,” Jesse scowls, sitting down beside him heavily. “I mean your lack of eating.”

Hanzo pauses with the cup halfway to his mouth, a small frown on his brow. He thinks for a second and then says, “Ah.”

“Ah?” Jesse repeats. “Hanzo - did you even notice you haven’t eaten?”

“We had that fruit this morning,” Hanzo disagrees.

“Hanzo, that was yesterday morning. And you ate half a tin of peaches and gave up.”

“I was full,” Hanzo says stiltedly. He sets his tea down and gives Jesse an icy look. “I am not a child, Jesse, I do not need you to coddle me.”

Jesse refuses to be baited. “I ain’t coddling you, Hanzo. I’m _worried_.” He reaches out a hand and smooths it along Hanzo’s cheek. Hanzo glares at him mulishly but allows it. Jesse can’t help but soften a little bit, because like this Hanzo reminds him of a disgruntled cat. “You’re burning through a lot of energy these days, and I ain’t gonna be pleased if you pass out on top of me.”

Hanzo sighs and pushes Jesse’s hand away but it’s gentle. “If you are so concerned with my dietary habit, I will try and be more aware of my eating,” he says. “Will that appease you?”

“What would appease me is if you’d let me get you something to eat right now.”

“Jesse -.”

“Hanzo, you haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

Hanzo bites his lip, but he’s a smart man and Jesse is stubborn. He blows out a breath. “Fine,” he says, only a little scathingly. “If it’d make you feel better, then yes, I’ll eat something so long as you’re eating with me.”

Jesse grins at him broadly and gets to his feet. He passes Hanzo back his tea. “Sugar, spending time with you even if it’s outta the sack ain’t ever gonna be a hardship,” he promises.

.

Hanzo sticks to his word and eats the entire sandwich Jesse slaps together without even complaining. Jesse’s inordinately proud of him because it’d been kind of a shitty sandwich, but their box of supplies is thin and they’re not in much of a position to leave the room.

Still, Hanzo mustn’t be feeling too awful because when Jessie is showering that night he creeps in with him.

“I thought you said something about breaking our neck?” Jesse asks, amused right up until the point Hanzo looks at him.

His eyes are wide and blown black and just seeing him is a punch to the gut. Hanzo slips into the shower stall, and up close like this the smell of heat on him is thick, caught behind the shower walls, and Jesse is drowning in it.

Hanzo makes a rumbling sort of noise as he presses his face into Jesse’s neck, hands reaching up to tighten in his hair. Jesse acquises immediately, tilting his head. It gives him a thrill that for once Hanzo is scenting _him_.

“You were saying something?” Hanzo asks, teeth catching at his throat.

“Not a thing,” Jesse wheezes, hands coming down to catch on Hanzo’s waist and then, with only the briefest of warnings, hauling him up and off the ground so that Hanzo has to wrap his legs around him or risk falling.

Hanzo hisses, steadying himself with hands on Jesse’s shoulder as he gives him an exasperated look. It’s hardly effective though, with his wet hair hanging in his face and the way he’s trying to pull them closer despite the fact there’s not an inch of space between them

“If you drop me -.”

Jesse can’t but smile. “Relax darlin’, you’re a featherweight compared to some of things I’ve hauled around in my day.”

Hanzo digs his heels sharp into Jesse’s back in retaliation but doesn’t fight. There’s a moment there where Jesse has to fumble to turn off the shower - look, he’s all for spontaneity, but he’s even more for the environment - and it takes him several times before he can manage. Hanzo laughs at him freely and Jesse takes care to bump him lightly into the wall as he staggers back to the bed.

Hanzo’s still laughing by the time Jesse dumps him on the sheets, the both of them soaking wet and naked.

“Now, c’mon, ain’t sporting to laugh at a man like that,” Jesse pants.

Hanzo’s grin widens. “Out of breath already, cowboy? Perhaps you’re getting old after all.”

“Laugh it up, buddy,” Jesse says, “you’re the same age as me.”

“Some of us age more…” Hanzo stretches, all leith muscles and wet skin that drive Jesse to distraction. His smile is wicked sharp. “ _Gracefully_.”

“Oh, hell, I can’t even remember what we’re talking about,” Jesse admits, and Hanzo laughs again, keeps on laughing right up until Jesse has him groaning and hissing and clawing deep furrows into Jesse’s shoulders that he’s sure will mark.

God, he _hopes_ they mark.

Give him something, anything, to remember this by. Hanzo free with himself like Jesse’s never seen him, poking fun at Jesse in one breath and seducing him in the next. Their time now is limited, Jesse can feel it, the heat winding down beneath Hanzo’s skin, and when it’s over who knows where that’ll leave them.

For now though - for now Jesse has _this_.

And he’ll be damned if he’s not going to make the most of it.

.

Jesse wakes up at _fucking-awful_ o’clock in the morning, blinking blearily up at the ceiling even as all his senses scream at him at once.

They’d gone to bed not long after Jesse had tired the last of Hanzo’s frantic energy out of him, and Jesse had been so sure that the second his head hit the pillow he wouldn’t be waking for a small eternity. So, for a moment Jesse is not sure what’s woken him although something undoubtedly _has._

He thinks, perhaps, Hanzo’s jumped him in his sleep again, but there are no hands on skin and no scent in the air driving him steadily to the brink of insanity. Groggily, he blinks again and levers himself up right in the bed.

It’s dark still, and there’s nobody in the room but Jesse and Hanzo’s body curled up beside him, broad shoulders moving up and down as he sleeps. Jesse yawns, cracks his jaw, and wonders if he’s losing it after all, if maybe a life lived on the whim of his instincts has made him more jumpy than he really ought to have let it.

And then the scent hits.

It’s - it’s hot. More fever than it is sex. There’s a sickness in the air, and when Jesse pauses to look at Hanzo he sees that the heaving of his shoulders is too fast, that there’s a tremble chasing up and down his sweat coated spine.

 _Fuck,_  Jesse thinks, and when he reaches out to shake Hanzo awake his skin burns.

“Hanzo. Hanzo, sweetheart, can you hear me?”

Hanzo groans and, after what feels like an age, his eyes flicker open. It’s not nearly the relief Jesse needs it to be. His gaze is unfocused and clouded, and Hanzo’s eyes dart around like he can’t quite tell where he is. They settle on Jesse with such an open look of bafflement that Jesse feels his gut clench.

“I don’t… Jesse?”

Jesse sooths a hand through Hanzo’s hair, pushing it out of the way of his face. It’s sweaty and lank, clinging to his skin. “Yeah, it’s me. You’re not - you’re not looking so well, darlin’. Do you know when this started?”

Hanzo frowns, reaches up to press a hand to his own forehead and looks absolutely bewildered by what he finds. It’d be adorable if the context of it wasn’t making Jesse anxious something fierce.

“I’m fine,” Hanzo insists, sounding anything but.

Jesse closes his eyes for patience. “Hanzo, you couldn’t be any _less_ fine if I just watched you fall off a damn cliff myself.”

Hanzo scowls at him but the venom of the look is detracted by the sweat rolling down his forehead.

He still smells of heat, but it’s buried beneath the uncomfortable smell of _sick_ and _illness_. There’s so much adrenaline in Jesse’s system right now that he’s damn close to rolling Hanzo up like a burrito and kicking down the door as he runs for Angela.

An alpha’s instinct is to primarily protect, and everything in Jesse’s system is telling him to _fix this_. Hanzo’s in pain, he’s hurt, and there’s precious little else Jesse could focus on besides that. For once, he and his instincts seem to be in complete harmony; Hanzo is the priority here, Hanzo is _always_ the priority.

Jesse takes a deep breath and pets along Hanzo’s sticky spine. Hanzo makes a small noise and shudders, like he can’t make up his mind whether the soothing motion makes things better, or the uncomfortable clinging of skin-on-skin makes it worse.

“Alright, I’m gonna - I’m gonna go get Ange, okay?”

Hanzo makes a noise that doesn’t quite seem to be words either way, so Jesse tries to slide off the bed, only to find Hanzo’s hand latching onto his wrist. His skin is furiously hot and his eyes are hazy as he glares balefully up at him.

“Hanzo -.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Hanzo rasps.

“Honey, I’m starting to think you don’t quite know the meaning of that word.” Gently, Jesse tries to pry Hanzo’s fingers off but even half delirious Hanzo has the strength of a small army.

“Don’t go,” Hanzo slurs, tightening his grip hard enough that Jesse can _feel_ the bruises bursting to life on his skin, but it’s nothing compared to the way that voice makes his heart break.

“Darlin’, you’ve got a fever, and I’m pretty damn sure you’re actively hallucinating right now,” Jesse says, using his free hand to run his fingers through Hanzo’s hair again. “Trust me, I ain’t wanna leave anymore than you want me to go, but I need to get Ange before you spontaneously combust or something.”

Hanzo makes a dissatisfied noise and smothers his face in his pillow. He’s shaking something awful, and it hurts just looking at him. Jesse can’t imagine those shudders are doing anything good for Hanzo’s old bones.

Gently, Jesse eases off the bed, wincing when Hanzo sucks in a breath loud enough to echo. “I’ll be right back,” he promises, but Hanzo’s buried his face in the pillow again and Jesse isn’t even entirely sure he’s heard.

It takes everything he has to force himself out the door. All of Jesse’s instincts are wrapped up in Hanzo right now, and it feels like chopping of a limb to leave him, even for a handful of minutes, and he can feel the distance between them keenly as he races out of the hall to Angela’s room, slamming into more than a few walls along the way.

He’s breathless and worked up by the time he skids to a stop, pounding on her door with enough force that he wouldn’t be surprised if he woke the whole base. He only has to wait a small handful of seconds before she opens it for him, instantly awake and fully alert in that way that medical professionals the world over have perfected.

She takes in his sweaty, disheveled appearance and immediately reaches for him in alarm. “Jesse? Are you -.”

“It’s Hanzo,” Jesse blurts, running jittery hands through his hair. “He’s got a fever hot enough to burn a building and he’s more out of it than I’ve ever seen him.”

Jesse has seen Hanzo in the midst of heat, with a severe concussion, and desperately sleep deprived; he knows a thing or two about what a semi-delusional Hanzo looks like by now. It all rather pales in comparison to _this_.

Angela’s expression falls from worry to stone in a heartbeat. She ducks back into her room for a second and comes back out shrugging on a cardigan haphazardly with one hand and juggling her medkit with the other. “Take me to him.”

Jesse is so pathetically, desperately grateful to her in that moment that he doesn’t have words for it.

They race back to Hanzo’s room, Jesse leading the charge and Angela on his heels. He knows he’s making a bigger deal of this than he has to - Hanzo’s not at death’s door no matter how awful he looks - but Jesse doesn’t have the self control to hold himself back right now.

Hanzo is sick, hurting, and Jesse can’t do anything about it. It kills him, this helplessness, rebels against his nature and his instincts. The best he can do for him right now is to pass him over to Angela and hover unobtrusively by his bedside, if he’s allowed.

Hanzo is a tiny lump in the middle of the bed by the time they return. He’s got both pillows over his head and the blanket drawn up past his shoulders. He’s shaking still, a quiver that Jesse can feel through the mattress itself as he sits down carefully beside him.

“Hey, darlin’,” Jesse says, fighting to keep his voice measured. “Ange is here, let her have a look at you.”

Hanzo peers out sluggishly from beneath the pillows. “Do not talk to me like I am a child, Jesse,” he says, with enough acid in his voice that it puts the fire of his fever to shame. Jesse is instantly and painfully relieved, because if Hanzo’s lucid enough to disdain Jesse’s attempts at comforting, he can’t be as far gone as he was worried.

“Oh, Hanzo,” Angela sighs as she catches a glimpse of his bright red cheeks and damp eyes. “I told you to come find me _immediately_ if you started feeling unwell.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Hanzo croaks for the umpteenth time. Jesse is saved from tearing his hair out in frustration by the glare Angela levels him; icy and frigid and extremely judgemental. Better man than either of them have fallen to that look and Hanzo shrinks into himself almost immediately.

“You are _not_ fine,” she says. “Now, be quiet and let me have a look at you, you stubborn fool.”

Hanzo’s quiet is mulish, but he allows Jesse to help him up against the pillows. Up close, Jesse can still smell the heat on him, but it does nothing but fan the protective flames growing in his gut. He can’t quite bring himself to drop his hand off Hanzo’s arm and he mustn’t be anywhere near as sneaky as he’d hoped, because Hanzo gives him a drowsy and yet long-suffering look.

He doesn’t push him away though, if anything he leans into him. It could be the fever wreaking havoc with his balance, but it could also mean that Hanzo isn’t made of the stone he fancies himself to be. Either way, Jesse is just grateful for the contact.

Angela is quick and thorough with her examination. Shining a torch in Hanzo’s eyes for long enough that they start to water, and tilting his head this way and that. At first Jesse is impressed with Hanzo’s restraint, but the more Angela manhandles him the more Jesse realizes that Hanzo just doesn’t have the strength to fight her.

“Alright,” she sighs as she pulls her hand away from his burning forehead. “To the medbay with you.”

Jesse feels sick to his stomach. “Is he -.”

“He’s…” Angela pauses. “Well, clearly he’s _not_ ‘fine’ - but he’ll live.”

By now Hanzo has listed right onto Jesse’s shoulder, mouth warm against his bare skin, but he’s lucid enough to snort at that. “I told you,” he says imperiously. “It’s nothing.”

“Hanzo Shimada, so help me I _will_ gag you if one more word crosses your lips,” Angela says, scowling.

Hanzo mumbles, probably something vicious and rude, and turns his face away, continuing to tremble against Jesse’s side. Carefully, Jesse raises a hand to run through his sticky hair and the gesture must do _something_ for Hanzo because he sighs against Jesse’s throat.

Looking back at Angela, Jesse asks, “Do you know what it is?”

“It’s a heat fever,” she says, matter-of-fact as she packs up her tools.

“A heat fever? Isn’t Hanzo a bit old for -.”

“Told you,” Hanzo grunts, “my body doesn’t particularly care what it should and shouldn’t be doing.”

Angela sighs but doesn’t refute him, standing up straight and giving Jesse a look. “I’m going to need you to carry him down to the medical bay for me.”

“Not a problem,” Jesse says.

“Not a child,” Hanzo grumbles again and is completely ignored.

Hanzo may be shorter than Jesse, but he is by no means a small man. Between that and the weight of his prosthetics Jesse grunts a little as he hauls Hanzo out of the bed. It’s not the first time he’s done this by now, and he can’t help but be thankful that one of his arms doesn’t feel the strain, because his back sure does.

Hanzo’s too out of it to put up more than a token protest, mumbling a little as he turns his warm face against Jesse’s neck. He looks pale as death and his fingers dig into the meat of Jesse’s shoulders and for a moment Jesse is worried Hanzo is about to puke all over him.

“Alright, sweetheat?”

Hanzo nods grimly, forehead shiny with sweat. “Let’s make this quick,” he says. “Gravity is not my friend right now.”

That makes Jesse beat a hasty retreat down the corridor like hell itself is nipping at his heels. The last thing either of them need right now is to add a bucket of vomit to the misery between them.

Despite his proclamation though, Hanzo is out like a light by the time Jesse shoulders his way into the medbay. His sleep looks far from restful, and he certainly doesn’t look any better, but it’s a relief to know that the worst of his fever is passing him by when he can’t feel it.

“Set him down here,” Angela says, patting a warm looking bed, and Jesse does, taking special care not to wake him and smoothing a hand along his forehead before he can stop himself.

Jesse takes a deep breath and turns to face Angela. “What do you need me to do?”

“Stay close,” she says, stripping out of her cardigan and getting started setting something up by the side of Hanzo’s bed, “but also out of my way. There’s not much I can do, I’m afraid, so I’m just going to hook him up to an IV because he’s going to be positively dehydrated come morning, and give him something to knock him out again if he’s in too much pain when he wakes up.”

“Can’t you…” Jesse waves his hand vaguely.

Angela pauses and gives him a look that is superbly unimpressed. “No, Jesse, I can’t just -” she mimics his gesture “- and you know that. Medicine is a lot more complicated than that.”

Jesse wants to argue, but he realizes it’s an urge born of desperate worry and a frantic overdrive of his alpha brain chemicals. Angela is doing the best she can. She’s right, Jesse’s job in this is to stay close to Hanzo and defer to her.

It doesn’t make it any more appealing though, and he knows he looks more than a little sulky as he sinks down into a chair beside Hanzo’s bed and ever so gently reaches out to take his hand. Even his fingers are shaking, and Jesse wants to press a kiss to his knuckles but knows he’d never live down the corniness if Hanzo were to awaken.

“Oh, Jesse,” Angela sighs. She drops a hand to the back of his neck and squeezes. “You’re a hopeless fool sometimes, I really thought that might get better with age.”

Jesse very purposefully doesn’t look up. “I ain’t got a clue what you mean, doc.”

He can hear Angela smile even if he can’t see it. “I’m sure you don’t. Alright, I’ll get this IV setup and then we can all go back to sleep and regroup in the morning.”

“Yes ma’am,” Jesse says obediently, with absolutely no intention of sleeping at all.

“Yeah,” Angela says. “I thought as much. Just… call me if you need anything.”

Jesse nods, but most of his attention is drifting already, settling in for a long night and a longer day when Hanzo wakes again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm honestly really not entirely happy with how this chapter came out, but no matter how many times i rejig it nothing changes, so i thought posting it was better than angsting over it. thank you all so very much for being so patient even though the wait was awful, i know.


	7. Chapter 7

Jesse sits by Hanzo’s bed for what feels like a small eternity. At some point, he dozes off, but he always jerks awake before he can get any kind of meaningful rest. Whenever his eyes stray to the clock, it doesn’t seem like any time has passed at all.

By the third hour, he’s resigned to the fact Hanzo is angling to sleep the night through. It’s a relief, honestly, because he does need his rest something fierce, but it leaves Jesse at odds, unsure what to do with himself.

By the fifth hour the sun has started to rise and Angela totters back in, yawning and rubbing at her eyes.

“Any change?”

Jesse shakes his head, not looking up from where he’s rubbing his thumb along the back of Hanzo’s hand in a soothing motion. Chances are Hanzo can’t even feel it, but it isn’t him that Jesse’s trying to soothe.

“That’s good,” she says, leaning forward and placing the back of her hand to Hanzo’s sweaty forehead. She hums under her breath and pulls away, giving Jesse an exhausted smile. “He’s still hot, but I think his fever’s broken. I can’t say whether it’ll come back or not, but it’s a good sign for now.”

Jesse lets out a breath. There’s an awful crick in his neck and when he tentatively rolls his shoulders it gives a _crack_ loud enough to have both him and Angela wincing.

“I know the answer, I’m sure, but please tell me you haven’t been sitting there all night.”

Jesse studiously does not meet her eye, focusing instead on the wings of grey fanning out in Hanzo’s hair. It might be his imagination, but he could swear that more has crept in sometime in the months they’d known each other. Given how stressful their lives are, and the rigmarole of guilt Hanzo puts himself through, Jesse wouldn’t be surprised.

He doesn’t mind, though. Hanzo could make anything look good, and besides, Jesse likes a little weathering in his men. The grey makes him look distinguished. Sexy as all fuck too, but definitely distinguished.

“I ain’t got nowhere else I need to be, doc,” Jesse says honestly.

Angela rolls her eyes. “So I see. But it can’t be doing wonders for your back.”

Jesse looks up and gives her a grin he knows is ten different kinds of cocky. “We’re the same age, Ange. I don’t think you’re in any position to be calling me old.”

He flinches out of the way as she swats at his shoulder. “Jesse McCree, you watch your damn mouth,” she warns, sticking a finger in his face threateningly. It should make her look like a frazzled schoolteacher, instead she seems like a woman with the wrath of god on her side. “I’m exactly as young as I look, and I’ll not have you spreading any nasty rumours.”

Jesse snorts. He’s long suspected, although he can’t quite prove, that Angela’s graceful aging is down to a lot more than just a natural inclination towards youth. Given her aptitude towards medical technology, he wouldn’t be surprised if she’d subtly encouraged her nanomachines to keep the greys from her hair and her face wrinkle free.

He sure as shit ain’t gonna be the one to call her on it though. Jesse’s lost enough limbs already, and he isn’t in the market to become a cyborg anytime soon.

“Of course,” he agrees placatingly. “Whatever you say, doc.”

She doesn’t seem convinced but pulls back and gives Jesse his space again. “I think I'll change his drip, keep him hydrated,” she says, beginning to fuss about beside Hanzo’s bed, banging this and that. “He doesn’t seem in a hurry to wake up, I can tell you that much.”

Jesse takes the chance to stand up, stretching out the aches and sore places that have made themselves at home in his body. By the time Angela turns around with an IV in hand he’s gearing up to sprawl back in his chair again.

“Oh no,” she says, quick as a whip. “I’m banning you from the infirmary.”

Jesse laughs but Angela doesn’t do more than quirk a brow. His laughter trails off. “You can’t be serious.”

“Go get something to eat, Jesse,” she says, gently this time. “Go for a stroll, have a shower. And then you can come back, alright?”

“I’m not hungry,” Jesse insists, which is both childish and untrue.

The look Angela gives him is skepticism incarnate. “You’ve just spent serval days expending more energy than you’re replacing, existing on tinned fruits and stale sandwiches. I’d sooner run into battle unarmed than believe you’re ‘not hungry’, Jesse McCree.”

Jesse winces and his fingers catch up in Hanzo’s blanket without his say-so. “I don’t -.”

“He’s suffering a heat fever, for goodness sakes, Jesse, not _dying_. It’s doing neither of you any favour to have you sit here mooning over him like a preteen girl.”

“And I’m his heat partner!” Jesse insists. “I should -.”

Hanzo groans and the both of them fall silent in a second. Jesse holds his breath, watching as Hanzo stirs. His brow furrows and after a second he blinks up at Jesse with those gorgeous dark eyes.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Jesse says, and he knows his smile is disgustingly tender but he couldn’t do a thing about it if he wanted to.

Hanzo raises a hand and Jesse thinks for a second Hanzo is going to stroke his cheek - but no, his palm lands dead centre of Jesse’s face and he _shoves_. It’s not hard, not when Hanzo has all the strength right now of a mulish kitten, but it startles Jesse enough that he doesn’t so much as lean out of the way.

“ _Loud_ ,” Hanzo says, sounding about as coherent as he looks, which is to say not at all.

The hand falls away and back to the bed. Jesse watches, mouth slightly agape, as Hanzo’s eyes flutter closed again. All of half a second later he lets out a _snore_.

“I think the verdict is in,” Angela says, and Jesse has never heard her sound so amused. “Visiting hours are over. You’re barred from the infirmary until you come back fed and smelling of roses.”

Jesse doesn’t think he’s smelled of roses at any point in his life, but he slinks out of the infirmary all the same, hat tucked low over his head and trying desperately to ignore the yawning chasm slowly forming in his gut.

It doesn’t feel right being away from Hanzo after days glued to one another’s side, and of course he knows that’s the lingering remnants of the heat talking, but only a little of it. The past few days have been damn near a dream for Jesse, and he should have known it’d turn into a nightmare.

He just ain’t allowed nice things. Simple as that.

He can’t bring himself to return to his room, slips back into Hanzo’s and is only slightly ashamed when he stops to scent the place for a solid minute. It smells like them, and it soothes something deep inside of him.

(it smells of sickness too, the scent of unpleasant sweat and fever, but it’s lesser, and in comparison to the infirmary it’s positively a breath of fresh air.)

Jesse showers quickly, washing his hair with Hanzo’s shampoo and scrubbing clean with his soap. He’d like it to be a more romantic gesture, to emerge from the bathroom smelling of his lover, but Hanzo has never been the frivolous sort. His soaps are Overwatch standard, same as Jesse, and he morosely washes scentless suds from his beard.

He pauses at the mirror as he dresses, winces at the bags beneath his eyes and the sallow lines around his mouth. He strokes a thoughtful hand over his chin, considers shaving, but can’t dredge up the effort. He’s toeing the line between devilishly-scruffy and wildman, but the only person whose opinion he cares about is dead to the world.

Jesse sighs, and pulls away from the mirror, jamming his hat on his head and swaggering out into the hall on his way to the kitchen.

It’s early enough that he’s more than a little surprised when he shoulders his way inside to hear the whistle of the kettle. Satya blinks at him, looking even more caught off guard then he’d been, a bright blue mug in one hand.

“McCree,” she says. “What are you doing?”

“Uh,” he says, thrown. He makes a vague gesture to the kettle. “Getting some coffee, and maybe, if the pantry’s feeling real generous, some toast.”

Satya frowns at him and sets her mug aside with a low _clink_. “What I mean,” she says, “is why are you out of Hanzo’s room? It’s only been three days.”

Jesse winces a little at the bluntness of the question. Trust Satya to have absolutely no embarrassment about this whole business.

“Change of plans,” he says. “Hanzo he - well, he came down with a fever real good.” He sees Satya’s expression and rushes to add, “He’s okay! Mostly, anyway. Ange is keeping an eye on him in the infirmary. She, uh, booted me out. I’m not allowed back until I’m showered and fed, apparently.”

Satya doesn’t look any more comforted. It’s a strange thing to see such open concern on her face. “Sit,” she says, pointing at the table, and Jesse does automatically, far too used to taking orders from terrifying people to question it.

Satya turns around, reaches up on her toes to the cupboard where Jesse hides his favourite mug and plucks it down. Jesse stares at her, mouth hanging. She catches sight of his expression and snorts.

“My nose is not nearly as dull as yours,” she says flatly, and turns around to start pouring out tea.

Jesse don’t mind tea as much as he’s lead Hanzo to believe, so he keeps his mouth shut. Mostly, he just likes teasing him. It can be awful fun to say ‘ _no’_ to him sometimes, keeps the both of them on their toes.

Besides, Jesse’s said all of three sentences to Satya the whole time they’ve known one another, and he sure as shit ain’t gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.

Satya returns and sets down Jesse’s mug. He obediently reaches for it and takes a hearty gulp. It’s hot and it don’t taste anything approaching familiar, but it’s good. He takes another mouthful. “Thanks.”

Satya nods and sits down daintily in the chair across from him, hands holding her mug with effortless poise. “I will not have you stinking up this kitchen with the swill you drink while I’m here.”

Jesse smiles despite himself. “Man, have you and Hanzo been comparing notes? My coffee ain’t _that_ bad.”

Satya takes a sip from her cup and neglects to answer that accusation. Instead, she says, “I knew that Hanzo had experienced difficulty with his heat in the past, but he never mentioned he still suffered from heat fevers.”

Jesse winces. “That’s Hanzo for you I’m afraid; man could be bleeding out and he’d try and tell you it’s just a simple papercut.”

“It’s a little more severe than that,” Satya says, and Jesse’s heart sinks.

“I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really know what a heat fever is,” he confesses. “Other than what’s in the name, I mean. I always just thought it was like - a puberty thing, I guess. That ya’ll grew out of it.”

“We do,” Satya says. “Normally.”

Jesse doesn’t like the sound of that. “Trust it to Hanzo to go and one-up the idea of normality.”

Satya doesn’t smile exactly, but the corner of her mouth twitches just the tiny bit. “It would not be out of character.”

Jesse looks down at his mug, swirling his tea this way and that as he thinks. He’s got a whole lot he wants to ask Satya, but he doesn’t want to go pushing boundaries. This is a talk he should be having with Hanzo, it really is, but Hanzo’s not exactly available and Jesse doesn’t want to spend however long sitting beside his bed terrified out of his mind because he doesn’t have a fraction of the information he should.

“Is Hanzo’s situation…” He pauses to find the right word. “Common?”

“No,” Satya says without missing a beat. “It is not. But neither is it rare. Heats are a difficult, complicated thing - there are always going to be people with whom they disagree with.”

“That’s real comforting.”

Satya shrugs. “It is fact, and facts are not always as comforting as we wish they were.”

Jesse grimaces and scrubs a hand over his exhausted face. “Ain’t that the truth.”

Satya reaches out and pats the back of his hand with her fingertips. It’s supremely awkward, but Jesse immensely appreciates her effort, even if she quickly draws her hand away like she’s worried Jesse’s skin will stain.

“If Hanzo is suffering with his heat, the best you can do is be there for now. His body will consider you his mate until this is all said and done, and just being near him will be more beneficial than you know.”

“Trust me, that ain’t a problem,” Jesse says. He offers her a grin. “My instincts ain’t exactly in disagreement there.”

“Good,” Satya says, getting to her feet. “Does Genji know his brother is in the infirmary yet?”

Jesse winces. It hadn’t even crossed his mind, truly. Genji would be well and truly furious if nobody told him what had happened, and god forbid he hear it from anybody else but those involved. The Shimada brothers worry about each other like mother hens although they’d never say as much.

That being said, Jesse is in loathe to deal with that right now. All he wants is to choke down something to eat and hurry back to the infirmary as fast as his weary bones will let him. And all things considered, he isn’t entirely sure whether Genji might place some of the blame for Hanzo’s condition on him.

Genji is usually an immensely reasonable sort of guy, but worry can do strange things to people. And besides, if Jesse had noticed what was happening with Hanzo earlier, they mightn’t be stuck in this predicament, so yeah, it is a _little_ his fault.

“Whatever thoughts you are thinking,” Satya says, “think them faster, because you’re wasting time sitting here and moping like a child.”

Jesse rolls his eyes and gulps down the rest of the tea, getting to his feet with a groan. “I missed it when you were being comforting.”

“I was doing no such things,” she says without batting an eye. “But if it’ll ease your mind, I’ll talk to Genji.”

Jesse raises a brow as he sets his cup down. “You will?”

“Yes, we have an appointment today anyway.”

“You have … an appointment?”

“It is our Movie Monday,” Satya says simply and sweeps out of the kitchen like that makes a damn lick of sense at all. Jesse has no clue where all these strange traditions between Overwatch members seem to keep springing up from, but he supposes he should be glad to see that they’re all getting along after what had been, admittedly, a fairly rocky start.

He sighs and heads to the pantry. The sooner he eats, the sooner he can function, and the sooner he can get back to sitting vigil by Hanzo’s side.

.

When Jesse returns, there is no longer any need to sit vigil. Hanzo is awake, propped up in the bed and talking to Angela. He looks uncomfortable but not necessarily pained, and Jesse couldn’t be gladder for it.

Although he’s sure he hasn’t made a sound, Hanzo looks up as Jesse comes through the door, and the minute they lock eyes his face breaks into a small, relieved smile. The things it does to Jesse’s gut are embarrassing.

“Jesse,” he says, and his voice is hoarse but clear.

“Hey, sugar,” Jesse grins, returning to his chair but not before he reaches out to grab one of Hanzo’s hands. Hanzo lets him, even tangles their fingers together easily in return. The feel of his skin soothes the angry jitters lighting up Jesse’s nerves like a livewire, and he doesn’t miss the faint, relieved flutter of Hanzo’s eyelids.

“How you doin’?” He asks.

“I’ve been worse,” Hanzo says. Angela snorts and he amends, “Although I could perhaps be doing better, too.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Jesse says. He gives Hanzo’s had a squeeze. “It’s good to see you awake. You gave me a mighty fright, sweetheart.”

“I’m sorry for that,” Hanzo says. He pulls Jesse’s hand and Jesse leans forward obligingly. Hanzo presses his forehead to his, and it’s such an unexpected gesture that Jesse doesn’t get more than a moment to breathe in the way he smells before he pulls back. Hanzo smiles at him, soft and tired. “Thank you, though. I do not remember last night too well, but I’ve been told I’m miserable company when I’m sick.”

Jesse stares at him blankly. He can feel heat creeping up the back of his neck, and he knows if he doesn’t do anything now to distract them both, it’ll spread to his cheeks real fast. But Hanzo’s being so openly _affectionate_ , and Angela is sitting right there, and Jesse’s poor heart can’t take this.

It’s Angela that takes pity on him, clearing her throat and jerking their attention back to her. She looks both amused and fond, which is par for the course these days. Jesse will take it over the awful exhaustion she’d worn in the last few months of the old days anytime.

“He’s been awake for only about twenty minutes or so, but as far as I can tell his fever has broken. It’ll mostly be exhaustion now.”

“That’s good,” Jesse says, relieved. “I gotta ask though – what are the chances of it happening again?”

Angela’s smile falls, just a bit. “Hard to say,” she admits. “For this heat cycle, I might tentatively say it seems unlikely that another fever might hit. For next time though…”

“I suspected as much,” Hanzo sighs, face tight. He doesn’t look surprised in the slightest. When he catches Jesse’s expression it softens just slightly. “I went ten years without a heat, Jesse. I’m hardly too surprised to see there are lingering after-effects. If I must live with them, then I will. There is not much of an alternative.”

Angela hesitates. “There is, perhaps, one thing.”

“No,” Hanzo says automatically, and even though it’s not directed at him Jesse winces at his tone.

Angela holds her hands up in a gesture for peace. “I only say it, because whether you choose it or not, the option exists. If you don’t want to, that’s your right, and I’m not going to disagree with you about it. I’m just your doctor, your health is your own, Hanzo.”

Hanzo actually winces a little. “I am sorry,” he says. “I did not mean -.”

“It’s forgiven,” Angela says simply, reaching out to give Hanzo’s free hand a small squeeze. “I ask you to consider it, and I am here if you wish to discuss it. Beyond that, if you’re feeling alright come evening, you’re free to return to your room.”

Jesse feels like he’s missed an entire conversation here, but the look on Hanzo’s face tells him plainly that whatever it is he doesn’t wish to discuss it now, and Jesse can do that, at least.

If it’s important, if it’s something that involves Jesse, Hanzo will tell him. He can be reticent, but he does not hide secrets that are not his to keep.

“What about his heat?” Jesse asks. He can smell it still, the lingering burn beneath Hanzo’s skin, but it’s muted, more like it had been in the days before it hit.

“You’ve probably got a day or two left of that,” Angela says. “But given how exhausted you are, I would not expect another wave to hit anytime soon.” She gives Hanzo a reassuring smile. “Your body’s been through enough stress as it is, it’s not about to endanger you by triggering a heat wave before you’re ready.”

“That at least is a relief,” Hanzo says, slumping in the bed and rubbing his eyes.

“There’s a good chance it might just burn out, honestly,” Angela says as she gets to get feet. “Depends on your health. I have some work I need to do now, but come find me if anything changes. All going well, I’ll be back in a few hours to release you into Jesse’s capable care.” She shoots him a sly look. “If he’s willing, of course.”

Jesse scowls. “Don’t you go fishing for gossip,” he warns, and Angela laughs, giving them both one last smile before sweeping out and away, closing the door behind her and plunging the room into silence.

They sit for a second before Hanzo asks, because he’s always so damn perceptive when Jesse doesn’t want him to be, “What is wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he lies, pasting a smile that feels entirely plastic on his face. He gives Hanzo’s hand a squeeze for good measure. “I was just caught up in my head.”

Hanzo does not look impressed. “I’ve found that often your head is not a nice place to be caught up in.”

He’s not wrong there, and it strikes a little too close to home for Jesse’s comfort. “It’s…” _It’s fine_ dies on his tongue. He’s heard it too often from Hanzo in the past several hours, and it’s soured irreparably in his mind. Instead, he say, “It ain’t anything to worry yourself over. I’m just… overthinking things.”

Hanzo does not look convinced, there’s a worried pinch between his eyebrows, but Jesse isn’t willing to talk about it, and he knows Hanzo respects him far too much to push.

In truth, he couldn’t talk about it even if wanted to. He doesn’t know what to say, how to say it, feels immeasurably guilty to have just _thought_ it.

Because when Angela had said the heat might just burn itself out without any preamble at all Jesse had thought _oh no please don’t do that_.

It wasn’t a conscious thought, not deliberate or intentional, but he’d thought it, and more than that, he’d _meant_ it. Hanzo hates his heat, he’s exhausted and uncomfortable and the heat burning itself out is absolutely the best thing for him right now.

But if it does, then Jesse will… run out of reasons to stay, to touch him. This affection between them that seems so effortless now will become stilted and awkward without Hanzo’s heat to guide his hand.

It’s not that he thinks Hanzo would put a distance between them, or that sharing what they’d shared has damaged their friendship. If anything, he knows that they’ll come out of this closer than ever before. Hanzo does not give his trust easily, but when he does it’s the kind of loyalty that sticks.

And it’s incredibly humbling to be worthy of that.

But Jesse wants more than mere loyalty and trust; he wants _this_. He wants to have permission to sit by Hanzo’s sickbed on the bad days, to hold his hand without reason. He wants to give him grief over the cuts and scratches he leaves on Jesse’s back and have him stare back completely unrepentant.

He’d thought going into this that he’d be fine. It’d be enough to have it the once, to just get a taste of what he’d been quietly yearning for. Just a taste, and then he’d be fine, he could step back, live off the memory.

He’d been wrong. Shit, oh fuck, had he been _wrong_.

Should have known better. Jesse’s always had an addictive personality, and Hanzo Shimada is a craving caught beneath his skin now, wired into his being. How the fuck is going to go back to that distance? How the fuck is he going to be able to stand having Hanzo so close but remembering they could be closer?

It’s an awful thought, and Jesse hates himself for it something fierce. He’d never hold Hanzo’s affection hostage in the power of his heat, hates that the thought of losing this so soon had given him panicked chills.

 _But_ _he’d thought they’d have more time_.

Hanzo’s looking at him still, frowning and studying Jesse’s face with curious, worried eyes. Jesse wipes his face blank in a heartbeat, refuses to give up even a fraction of what’s going on in his head.

That’s something for Jesse to figure out. Hanzo has enough problems without trying to untangle the needy, clingy mess that Jesse is terrified of becoming.

“Forget about me,” Jesse says, playfully jostling him. “How are you feeling? Think you’ll be up to returning to your room tonight?”

Hanzo’s mouth pinches for a moment, but he lets Jesse distract him with good grace. “I’ll be returning to my room if I have to lock Doctor Ziegler in her office to do it.”

Jesse laughs. “I’m sure I could smuggle you out of here if I had. Used to be real good at espionage in my day, you know.”

Hanzo does not look like he knows. He casts a slow, deliberate glance down to the spurs on Jesse’s boots and then slowly drags his eyes back up to his face. It’s funny how somebody can be so goddamn _sassy_ without saying a word.

“It’s true! I promise, swear on my heart.” Jesse presses a hand to his chest and flutters his eyelids. He can see the small smile tugging at Hanzo’s mouth and it goes a long way to soothing the frazzled monster making a mess of his head.

So he won’t have the heat - and, in less than a few days, he won’t have Hanzo. But he has this, for now. He has Hanzo’s affection and his attention, and he’ll make the most of that while he can.

Jesse’s good at getting by on less. He can take whatever Hanzo will give him and stretch it out to be enough.

( _even he doesn’t believe himself, but Jesse is also a fantastic liar, and that too he can live with.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay. i know everything seems angsty now, but it'll get better. you've just gotta sit through jesse's endless pining first. (honestly, if you've ever read a fic by me before, you knew well and good the introspective pining was coming.) 
> 
> once again, thank you all so much for your continued support!! seeing how much people have liked this softer take on an omegaverse has really kept me going, and i hope that you're all still interested despite the gaps between updates. as always, i'm glenflower over on tumblr should you ever wanna drop by for any reason at all.


	8. Chapter 8

Angela lets them go shortly after noon, but not without some brief fussing. Given what they put her through, Jesse can hardly fault her.

“Come back immediately if you even slightly think something is wrong,” she says, but she’s looking at Jesse.

“I am standing right here,” Hanzo says.

“Yes, and you’ve proven not to be the highest authority when it comes to looking after yourself,” Angela says. “I know Jesse will listen to me, at least about this.”

“Wow, never thought I’d see the day you’d say that,” Jesse says. “Anything more and you’ll make me blush.”

Angela rolls her eyes at him, pushing at his shoulder until he obediently backs up to the door. “I’m as surprised as the rest of you. If there’s nothing else, I think I’m going to have a nap now, given I spent most of my night fretting.”

“Sorry,” Hanzo says with a chagrined wince.

“Don’t be silly,” Angela says. “It’s part of my job.”

Hanzo opens his mouth to say something else but Angela shuts the door right in his face. Jesse can’t help but grin at the vaguely offended look on Hanzo’s face. “C’mon,” he says, taking Hanzo’s wrist and pulling him gently. “I think we owe Ange her rest. You’re looking remarkably exhausted yourself too, sugar.”

Hanzo sighs, rubbing his forehead with his free hand but allows Jesse to lead him down the hallway with no resistance. “You would think several hours of sleep would be enough to shake that.”

“You’re sick,” Jesse says simply, punching in the code to Hanzo’s room. The fact he knows it still makes him childishly giddy; the fact that Hanzo trusts him enough to share it. The door beeps and Jesse nudges it open with his shoulder and backs the both of them in. “If your body says it wants to rest, who are you to argue with it.”

Hanzo gives him an amused look, gently pulling free of Jesse’s grip to go sit on the edge of the bed. He reaches down to begin unbuckling his prosthetics. “The person inside of it, I would think.”

Jesse grins, tucking his hands into his pockets and watching. Hanzo fingers are fumbling with the clasps and the buckles and he itches to offer a hand, but he knows better than most how irritating that can be, people jumping in to help when it’s not needed or wanted.

After a moment the prosthetics click free and Hanzo lets out a groan, arching his back and rubbing at the aching places they’d been.

Jesse shuffles forward and bends down to shift Hanzo’s legs out of the way so he’s less likely to trip over them. “You shouldn’t leave them on for so long without a break,” he scolds.

“I usually take them off to sleep,” Hanzo says. “But I have been… preoccupied, lately.”

Jesse can’t help but leer at that last bit. “Preoccupied, hey?”

Hanzo rolls his eyes at him. “You have not been complaining.”

Jesse thinks about the deep scratches on his back, the bruises from where Hanzo had forgotten the strength of his heavy legs and kicked him a little too hard, the way Hanzo’s eyes had darkened when Jesse hauled him about like he didn’t weigh anything more than a feather. It’s like every last mark Hanzo has left on him burns at the thought and Jesse tries remarkably hard to keep a straight face as he says, “Nah, it’s fine.”

The look Hanzo gives him says he sees straight through Jesse’s fairly poor attempt at a poker face, but there’s a smile on his lips that seems a lot more like a smirk.

It sends a small curling bolt of heat through Jesse’s gut and he clears his throat quickly. “Alright,” he says, reaching out to push Hanzo’s shoulder gently until he gets the hint and leans backwards on the bed. “Enough of that, you should be resting.”

For a second Jesse thinks Hanzo’s going to argue with him, and Jesse’s willpower is only so strong, but after a second Hanzo sighs and lays down, arm tossed carelessly over his eyes. “You are right, unfortunately,” he says. “It has been a long time since I had a heat fever, and I have forgotten how exhausting it is.”

Jesse makes a small, sympathetic noise. He’s not an omega, can never truly know what that feels like, but he’s been sick as a dog before, and it’s anything at all like the time he caught the flu in Korea, he wouldn’t be surprised if Hanzo didn’t feel much like leaving the bed for a week.

“You ain’t gotta anywhere you need to be, sweetheart,” Jesse says. “I mean, it isn’t the nicest way to spend the week you took off to have marathon sex, but at least you don’t gotta try and talk to Winston about it again.”

Hanzo snorts, and even though Jesse can’t see his face, he knows the amused smile he must be wearing.

“I think you traumatized Winston last time,” he says, “I doubt he is in a hurry to talk to either of us ever again.”

Jesse preens despite himself. “I was just telling it how it is. Boss man was the one asking all the questions, remember?”

Hanzo waves a hand at him, and Jesse’s smile lingers for a moment, fond, before he asks, “I gotta ask, you want me here for this? Because if you - if the heat’s not - I can go if you need me to.”

The hand over Hanzo’s face shifts and he can see his eyes again, squinted and narrowed. “Jesse,” he says, “I am still in heat, whether my body is rebelling against it or not. I do not blame you if you have no desire to stay here when I am like this, but I promise you that you just being here is a massive help within itself.”

Jesse’s shoulders sink beneath the weight of relief. “Of course I don’t mind staying,” he says, which is a vast understatement if ever there was one. “I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t intruding none.”

“You are not,” Hanzo says with confidence that awes Jesse something fierce. “I would appreciate it immensely if you would come over here, if that is alright with you. After spending the past several hours in the medical wing, I am… uncomfortable.” Hanzo grits his teeth together, and Jesse knows it takes Hanzo a lot of pride to admit just how touchy the heat leaves him.

Jesse wastes no time kicking his boots off and crawling into bed, grunting as Hanzo nearly elbows him in the side. “I swear, you’ve got the sharpest elbows this side of the known universe, Shimada.”

“Sorry,” Hanzo says, sounding far more amused than apologetic, but Jesse doesn’t have it in him to mind.

Hanzo’s hands curl into the neck of his shirt and in a second he’s maneuvered the both of them how he wants them, curled on their sides facing one another, Hanzo’s face pressed into Jesse’s neck and Jesse’s good arm trapped beneath him. Hanzo reaches down for a second and plucks Jesse’s free hand up, placing it delicately on his waist without an ounce of self-consciousness and Jesse can’t help but grin into his hair.

“This good then?”

“Mmhm,” Hanzo says, sounding content and faintly sleepy for a man who’d been holding a full coherent conversation moments ago. One of his hands drops down and slides under Jesse’s shirt, palm cold enough to make Jesse arch his back and hiss, but not nearly enough to make him pull away.

He can feel Hanzo’s breath at his throat, and then the cold press of his nose beneath his ear. Jesse barely holds back a full body shiver at the mere notion of being scented. It’s… intimate. Not that the sex they’ve been having wasn’t, but there’s something intrinsically different about Hanzo finding comfort in Jesse’s scent like this, and it makes the alpha in him smug and satisfied.

Jesse strokes his thumb cautiously along the strip of skin above Hanzo’s waist, and when Hanzo just makes another contented noise Jesse lets it slip higher, repeating the motion until he swears Hanzo’s gone to sleep right then and there.

“How you doing, sugar? Gonna take another nap?”

“Not yet,” Hanzo says. “I just need… to rest.”

“Sound like you’re already asleep.”

The noise Hanzo makes this time is significantly more annoyed. He shifts slightly, pressing closer. “Talk to me then. I have just spent hours asleep in the medbay, the last thing I want is to do it again. Distract me.”

“Why don’t you talk?” Jesse counters with a grin. He sees a chance then, and in a flash of inspiration says, “Tell me about Dorado.”

Hanzo lifts his head and gives Jesse a look. “You are not as smooth as you think you are.”

Jesse tries his hardest to look innocent. “No clue what you mean, sugar. You wanted to talk, and I just think it’d be an interesting conversation topic. We can talk about whatever you want.”

Hanzo laughs ever so slightly and Jesse feels it against his skin. “If you are so curious,” he says, “I suppose I can share.” He shifts again, thigh sliding between Jesse’s own. For a moment it’s disconcerting not to feel their angles tangle together, but Jesse remembers suddenly that the prosthetics are laying abandoned by the door and relaxes. “It was, a few years ago now, so my recollection might be hazy, you will have to be patient with me. I was there hunting a bounty.”

There are times that Jesse forgets that Hanzo spent years as an assassin and a mercenary before Genji found him and brought him to them. It’s not that he ever doubts Hanzo’s abilities, because the man is downright terrifying at times, but just that it feels like he’s always been here, that there’s always been a door in HQ with his name on the plate.

“He was a tricky man to find,” Hanzo continues, “it took me the better part of three months to even figure out what city he was in.”

“Didn’t think there was a man out there who could outrun you, sugar.”

The hand Hanzo has on Jesse’s stomach is warm and heavy. “He was hard to keep hold of,” Hanzo says. “Slippery. Like a worm.”

Jesse snorts despite himself. “But you caught him, I wager.”

“In a sense,” Hanzo says. “One night I found him alone as he was walking back from one of the local bars.” Hanzo pauses for a second and then says, “Well, walking is perhaps a bit of a generous word. Stumbling, maybe. He was singing too.”

“Was he better than me?” Jesse asks cheekily.

“Worse,” Hanzo says immediately.

“Didn’t know that was possible.”

“If you had heard, you would understand,” Hanzo says. “I had a rooftop position, but I was just keeping surveillance. I do not jump into a job until I have all the facts. It is easy enough for the person giving me a bounty to tell me the body count they are responsible for, but there is no telling what they are leaving out of their brief.”

“You’re a real thorough man,” Jesse marvels.

“I have enough blood on my hands without adding the blood of innocents to it,” Hanzo says, which okay, is slightly darker than Jesse had been hoping this story would get, but Hanzo’s thumb is still stroking absently over his abs so he mustn’t be feeling too grim.

Possibly, it’s just Hanzo being morbid again, in that casual way he sometimes is. Jesse supposes if he spent ten years thinking he’d killed his own brother, he’d come out of slightly darker than he went in as well.

“So?” Jesse prompts gently.

“So,” Hanzo continues, “I was not impressed, but harmless public drunkenness is hardly a crime.”

That much, Jesse should know. He’d been stumbling through the streets of Dorado two sheets to the wind more than a couple of times himself, but he wisely keeps his mouth shut.

“And then, if you would believe it, the fool was dumb enough to try to take a shortcut through one of the alleys. In the worst part of Dorado at three in the morning, drunk and obviously foreign.”

Jesse winces. “I’m guessing he didn’t make it out of the alley.”

“That is the interesting part,” Hanzo says, and his voice is silky smooth, fond and amused. He’s a good storyteller, which is something Jesse would not have expected from him. “He gets jumped, of course he gets jumped. Two or three young men - teenagers, really - with a knife each. Honestly, I was thinking that these kids were going to swipe my bounty out from beneath of me. The sightline was useless by then, and I was convinced in the thirty seconds it took for me to climb down and reach the alley he would already be dead.”

“He wasn’t?”

“Even better,” Hanzo says, “not only was he alive, but so were the kids. He had disarmed all of them, knocked two unconscious, and was giving the last one a stern talking to. Turns out that he knew these kids. Some of the locals had warned him about them. Seems like they had been under the influence of Los Muertos, and rather than just beat them up and be done with it, this man had decided to set them on the right path.”

Something in Jesse’s gut turns over and he straightens up, but Hanzo’s hands on him hold him down. “Now, hold up -.”

Hanzo props himself up, hair falling over his shoulder. He’s devastatingly handsome like this and the smile he gives Jesse is the smuggest he’s ever seen from him. “So there I am, watching this man with a sixty-million dollar bounty play mentor with a bunch of child thugs, and I am beginning to get the impression that this is one of those cases where I have not been given all the information.” The look he gives Jesse is so fond that Jesse will be thinking about it until the day he dies. “So I think, ‘ _whoever this Jesse McCree is, he does not seem as bad as the wanted posters make him seem_ ’.”

“You were hunting me,” Jesse says incredulously. “You weren't - _no_.”

“Yes,” Hanzo says, smiling broadly. “Three months on your tail, and by the time I finally catch up with you, you have the gall to be decent man.”

Jesse gapes up at him. He feels like he’s slipped sideways into a parallel dimension. He can remember that night, ever so vaguely. He’d spent all evening drinking some truly excellent local brews, and by the time the kids had jumped him in the alley he’d been feeling on top of the world. Hadn’t seemed right to do more than give them a scare, given how the community had talked about the boys. Wasn’t their fault Los Muertos was like a vulture, swooping in at the slightest sign of instability.

One of Hanzo’s hands lands on his face, palm cupping his chin and fingers running along his the high of his cheek. “I have not even shared my favourite part yet.”

“There’s _more_?” Jesse wheezes, his collection of the night shaky at best.

“I was not precisely hiding,” Hanzo says, “so this man, he spotted me. I was certain that he would attack. A strange man in the alleyway where he had just been jumped? I would have drawn my bow before they could speak.” Hanzo’s smile widens if at all possible, and Jesse is kind of in awe of how much enjoyment he’s clearly getting out of this story.

“What did I do?”

“Well,” Hanzo says, “the very first thing you ever said to me, Jesse McCree, was ‘ _well, hey there darling, I must have died and gone to heaven after all because it sure seems like there’s an angel standing in front of me'_.”

Hanzo’s impression of him is awful and charming, but Jesse can hardly focus on it. “I did _not_ ,” he says, horrified, even though now that Hanzo’s telling him the story, he can sort of remember.

Not the details, but the feeling. He’d woken up the next morning terribly hungover but also strangely wistful with only the faintest memory of a Good Thing happening that he couldn’t quite pin down. It’d keep him in a great mood for days.

It’d figure Hanzo would have that impact on him long before they ever properly met.

“I was a bit … confused,” Hanzo says. His thumb is still brushing against Jesse’s cheek and it’s driving him to distraction. “I did not have the slightest clue what to make of you, but it was clear that you were not dangerous.” He pauses and then corrects, “No, that is inaccurate. You had the potential for danger, but you were not somebody I was worried about using it for the wrong reasons.”

“So what did you do?” Jesse says. “Put me out of my misery, give it to me straight.”

“I offered to help you carry the children to the nearest hospital, if you needed the help,” Hanzo says, surprising him. When he sees the look on Jesse’s face he snorts. “You turned me down, said that you were relatively certain the kids lived not two blocks away and that their friend would be back with their parents any minute. I believe the exact phrase you used was ‘ _couldn’t ask an angel to do something like that’_.”

Jesse groans, raising a hand to rub at his face. He’s not a prude, is as happy to flirt with anybody sober as he is drunk. But this is Hanzo, and Jesse doesn’t remember a word of any of this, has spent _months_ now thinking they met for the first time in the Overwatch compound beneath Genji’s careful supervision.

“You are a cruel, cruel man, Shimada,” he says.

“You should not be so embarrassed,” Hanzo says. “I saw the best of you that night.” His smile this time is a good deal darker. “Your terrible flirting and your kindness might have saved your life.”

“You wouldn’t have killed me,” Jesse says, pulling Hanzo back down to bed and slinging an arm over him.

“I did not know you then.”

“Well,” Jesse says, “let me rephrase; you couldn’t have killed me.”

“You sound awfully confident,” Hanzo says, “given our current shootout record is twenty-two to twenty-six, in my favour.”

“Listen, I was off my game last time,” Jesse says. “And the time before that you made me use a _bow_.”

“Do not sound so scandalized, the bow is a beautiful weapon.”

Jesse thinks of the way Storm Bow looks in Hanzo’s hands, and he certainly can’t argue. The grace and talent there is enough to make him dizzy most days, and with Hanzo’s heat still thrumming quietly beneath his skin, near enough for Jesse to smell, it’s not something he can let himself think about for too long without starting something Hanzo isn’t in the position to finish.

“And besides,” Hanzo says, “you made me use one of your revolvers last time.”

“I wasn’t sure if your perfect aim extended to guns,” Jesse protests. “I had to check!”

It definitely didn’t have anything at all to do with Jesse wanting to see how Hanzo looked with his powerful hands holding Peacekeeper steady. Because that would be ungentlemanly and beneath him.

The topics just keep toeing closer to dangerous territory, so Jesse says, “Man, I can’t believe you’ve known me for _years_ now and you managed to keep a lid on it for this long.”

“To begin with it was awkward,” Hanzo admits. “I did not know whether you remembered or not, or whether you were just pretending not to so that it wouldn’t be … uncomfortable.”

“And then?”

“Well, by the time I figured out that you do not have an ounce of dishonesty within your body, we were already growing closer, and it seemed far funnier to wait to spring it on you when you least expected it,” Hanzo says, without the slightest hint of shame.

This whole damn time Hanzo has been looking at him and remembering _that_. Jesse ain’t even mad, because Jesse thinks he would have done the same damn thing in Hanzo’s shoes. Ammunition this good wasn’t something to be given up easily.

“You’re a right devil, sweetheart,” Jesse says. “You’ll do my poor heart in one of these days.”

“That might just be because you are old,” Hanzo says without batting an eye.

“Them’s fighting words,” Jesse says, “if it wasn’t for the fact you’re sick I’d be challenging you to another shootout, you best believe it.”

“And I would take you up on it if I did not feel like I was about to pass out any second now,” Hanzo says, and Jesse grins at him, adjusting them slightly so he can curl an arm around him and tug the blanket up past where they were caught down by Jesse’s ankles.

“Sleep now, shoot later.”

“That sounds like your life philosophy,” Hanzo says sleepily.

“And after that we’ll have something to eat,” Jesse says, just to see the amused tilt to Hanzo’s mouth. He’s not disappointed, and it takes more self-control than he thought he had to hold back from swooping down and kissing him.

There’s a difference, he’s pretty sure, between kissing in the middle of a heat and taking advantage when Hanzo has trusted him enough to curl up like this. He’s not sure where their lines are at the moment, and he’s not willing to risk treading across them.

Instead, he smooths one hand up across Hanzo’s hip and says, “And when you wake up you can tell me more about this handsome, kind stranger you met in Dorado.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have been dying to write the Dorado scene for longer than you know, goddamn. i hope you guys found it is as funny as i did writing it, and you didn't just choke to death on the fluff. thank you all so much for the patience, and i hope this scene is a worthy reward for the angsty wait you must have had after the last chapter. 
> 
> as always, i am glenflower on tumblr, and although it may take some time, i always respond to any asks or messages.


	9. Chapter 9

Hanzo spends most of the next day sleeping. Jesse cannot begrudge him that. It’s been an exhausting week, and the fever had done a real number on what little strength he had left in him. If anything, Jesse’s surprised he held out for so long.

When he manages to wake up for longer than a minute, Jesse takes the chance to patiently wheedle him into eating, even though Hanzo just sits in bed looking dazedly down at the bowl of tinned fruit Jesse handed him.

“I’m tired,” he says thickly.

“I know,” Jesse says sympathetically as he folds Hanzo’s fingers around the spoon. “Honey, I know. But you gotta eat something or you’ll be right back where you started, and you don’t want that, do you?”

Hanzo looks contemplative for a second, like it’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make, but eventually he sighs and begins to eat, even though the expression on his face looks miles away. Now that Jesse knows Hanzo’s not knocking at death’s door, he can’t help but be amused at his expense.

This is the dragon defanged. It’s a greater privilege than Jesse can hope to explain to bear witness to it.

When Hanzo is done eating, Jesse gently take the bowl and sets it aside before crawling into bed with him. Hanzo makes a noise that he cannot hope to decipher, but he turns gladly towards him, hands catching in Jesse’s shirt and forehead resting against his chest.

A dozen times now they’ve laid together all curled up, and it still gives Jesse heart palpitations. He wonders how many people have seen Hanzo like this; unguarded and as soft as he’s ever likely to get. He’d wager he hasn’t got much competition.

He can understand now why Hanzo would never have considered spending his heat with a partner before Jesse offered himself up. It would be a foolish man to ever mistake Hanzo as vulnerable, but right now he’s… distracted. And Hanzo does not permit the world to see him as anything less than perfectly put together and coherent.

Jesse smooths a hand through Hanzo’s hair. “You doin’ okay, darlin’? Need anything?”

“Silence,” Hanzo says, voice muffled against Jesse’s neck. “Although I know that might be asking too much.”

“I can give you that,” Jesse says. “I’m in a generous sort of mood.”

Hanzo doesn’t respond and it takes Jesse a solid minute to realize it’s because he’s already asleep, out like a light between one moment and the next. Without Hanzo to see it, Jesse allows himself a smile that’s just this side of adoring and settles down for a long day of being used as a body pillow.

He can’t say he truly minds. There are worse fates in the world.

.

Jesse wakes to a cold bed. For a moment, he’s just confused and strangely lonely, his mind slowly working itself back online. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he supposes that isn’t so surprising when he’d spent most of the day buried beneath the blankets with an exhausted Hanzo.

Speaking of, he can hear the hiss of the shower and realizes Hanzo hasn’t abandoned him, just left for the bathroom.

With a groan, Jesse rolls over and glances at the bedside clock.

It’s barely three in the morning. He supposes he can’t resent Hanzo for his desire to wash away two days worth of sickly sweat, but Jesse really is far too tired to be getting up in the middle of the night like this. Used to be he could stay awake until dawn without so much as blinking, and right now he misses his youth keenly.

It’s an effort to stumble out of bed, but without Hanzo curled up beside him it holds little appeal anyway. He can only assume Hanzo’s feeling better if he hadn’t even woken Jesse as he left, so he sets about clumsily making his tea for him, fingers thick with sleep and fumbling the teapot more than once although thankfully he doesn’t quite manage to drop it. He doesn’t bother turning a light on, can see well enough with the moonlight pouring through the window.

He hears the shower shut off and barely a moment later the bathroom door opens, filling the room with steam. Surprised, Jesse turns, but before he can so much as get a word out Hanzo is there in his space, cheeks flushed from the hot water and incredibly naked.

“Darlin’, what -.”

Wordlessly, Hanzo plucks the cup of tea from Jesse’s hand, sets it back down atop the desk, and slides his fingers into Jesse’s hair, tilts his head back, and kisses him.

Jesse startles, but Hanzo is wet, naked, and pressed up against him, and Jesse’s all but programmed to respond to that by now. He’s kissing back before he can think better of it, hands on the warm skin at his waist and allowing Hanzo to turn them, backing him towards the bed with an ease that sets a fire along his nerves.

Jesse’s knees hit the mattress and he goes down like a ton of bricks. Hanzo follows easily, his thigh slipping between Jesse’s own, hands still in his hair and mouth tracking down his neck, teeth catching just hard enough to make all the air leave Jesse’s lungs.

Honestly speaking, Jesse’s still half asleep, reacting more on animal instinct than real thought. His head feels like it’s full of cotton, and it’s all he can do to force himself to think past the distracting sensation of Hanzo’s knee pressing against his rapidly hardening dick.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Jesse rasps, pushing weakly at Hanzo’s shoulder although he might as well be trying to move a brick wall. “What -.”

Hanzo makes an impatient noise, moves back up from his throat to kiss Jesse again, cutting him off once more before he can get another word out. It’s not the conversation Jesse had been aiming to start, but it’s an answer all the same.

He reaches up and manages to snag his fingers in the thick tangle of Hanzo’s hair and effortlessly rolls them over in one move. Hanzo goes more than willingly, and it’s far from the first time Jesse’s seen him naked against these sheets but it’s a kick to the gut all the same.

“Oh _darlin’_ ,” Jesse says, voice thick with adoration, cannot hold himself back. He thinks lesser men would probably die for this sight, and it gives him no shortage of satisfaction that he’s privy to it, that he’s _earnt_ the right.

The alpha in him is bristling, waking in a smoky roll of hunger, and Jesse is more than a little alarmed at the thoughts it’s putting in his head. The desire to scent Hanzo is indescribably intense, and Jesse is helpless but to give into it, ducking down to press his face in at Hanzo’s throat, nose beneath his ear and open mouth tasting the sweat, clean flavor of his skin.

The scent of him is the same as always; lightning and rain, the sharp edge of aroused desire that Jesse is thrilled to have put there. The scentless suggestion of soap from his shower, and the comfortable warmth of the sheets.

It’s enough to give Jesse a head rush, which is possibly why it takes a moment to figure out what’s missing.

He can’t smell the heat. There’s nothing but the lingering traces of it, the faint remnants of Jesse’s own touch. It’s skin deep, nothing like the bone aching, all-consuming scent he’s grown used to.

Panic cuts through the haze in Jesse’s mind like a sharp knife, cleaving his every thought in two. He can feel the bottom drop out from his stomach, and there’s a sensation like loss flowering somewhere deep inside of himself.

The heat’s gone, and with it so are all his excuses to stay here and take what was never his to begin with.

“Hanzo,” Jesse says, voice rough, and he goes to pull back, to put space between them before things get out of hand. “You’re not -.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Hanzo hisses, voice like the crack of a whip, and his hands fist in Jesse’s shirt, pulling him back in. He arches up, rides against the knee Jesse has between his thighs. “Stop thinking and touch me.”

 _But you don’t want me to_ , Jesse thinks, confused. _Your heat is over with, and you don’t need me anymore._

It’d take a stronger man than Jesse McCree to say no to an invitation like that though, and he lets himself be reeled back in, slides his hands along the vast expanse of Hanzo’s skin, grips Hanzo’s knee and jerks him down the bed. Hanzo takes the sheets with him as he goes and hooks his ankles behind Jesse’s back. His hair is in absolute disarray already, and his pupils are blown wide.

It seems impossible to Jesse that somebody could ever look this attractive. That’s Hanzo for you, he supposes; stomping all over pitiful things like convention and reality without exerting any effort whatsoever.

Hanzo kisses sharp enough to draw blood, and when he gets Jesse’s shirt off he rakes his nail down his chest, catching at skin. Jesse flips him over on the bed, hands on his waist bruising, and nips along the back of Hanzo’s neck, keeping his teeth carefully away from his throat.

It feels more like a fight than sex. Jesse wonders what Hanzo is trying to prove here, wonders what he himself is trying to prove here. He doesn’t let himself focus on it though, can’t possibly abide by any distractions right now.

This is their last time, and he’ll be damned if he is going to do anything but enjoy it thoroughly, take whatever it is Hanzo will give him and treasure it deeply and dearly. He doesn’t know if this is just Hanzo working off the last of his heat, or whether it’s a pity fuck, but Jesse isn’t going to question it.

Without the heat, Jesse doesn’t have the patience to try and prepare Hanzo right now. If the way Hanzo grapples for one of Jesse’s hands and draws it down between his legs is anything to go by, neither does Hanzo.

He helps Hanzo on to his hands and knees, nudges his legs apart and presses himself up along his back. Hanzo groans, reaching to try and help drag Jesse’s pants down over his thighs. He’s more a hindrance than anything, the angle is too awkward for it, but his enthusiasm is gratifying.

“This alright?” Jesse asks, pausing for a moment even as his thumb presses hard into the divot at the base of Hanzo’s spine.

He can’t see his face, but the exasperated noise Hanzo makes is very familiar.  

“It is, as always, more than alright,” Hanzo says. “Thank you for asking, but please stop talking and _move_.”

That’s an order Jesse can listen to. He bites back a smile, pushes Hanzo’s legs tightly closed, and rocks forward into the sweaty gap between his thighs.

It’s tempting to take his time, to draw this out, but they’re both far too keyed up for it. Hanzo reaches back, fingers digging into the meat of Jesse’s hip, and urges him on. Jesse takes the hint, leaning forward and pushing Hanzo down against the mattress as he bucks forward. He reaches around and closes his fingers around Hanzo’s dick. Feeling how hard he is, the wet slide of his precome, it’s enough that Jesse thinks he could probably get off on just that alone.

He drops his forehead between Hanzo’s shoulder blades and rocks forward again and again. The tight heat of Hanzo’s thighs feels amazing, and his skin is still wet enough from the shower that the glide is mostly smooth. He works Hanzo in his tight fist, thumb rubbing along the tip of cock mercilessly.

“Oh, shit, sweetheart, _darlin’_ \- you feel real good.”

Hanzo laughs, a sharp bark of breathless noise. “So you - you have said.” Jesse thrusts hard just as he twists his wrist and it punches a loud groan from him. “Must you always talk so much, cowboy?”

“Are you saying you don’t like it?”

Hanzo says something but it’s not English. The high, lofty twist of his words is slightly ruined when Jesse presses his lips against the back of his neck and Hanzo stutters.

“That didn’t sound like a no, sugar.”

“Maybe it wasn’t,” Hanzo agrees. He reaches down, fingers wrapping around Jesse’s own, urging him quicker. “ _Don’t stop_.”

Jesse couldn’t if he wanted to. His skin feels like fire, and he feels like might combust at any moment. It seems impossible that something this fumbling and desperate should hold up to the truly furious sex they had during Hanzo’s heat, but it _does_.

He wonders if maybe the instant chemistry between them hadn’t entirely been the heat after all - if perhaps it was just them. A more intense version of them surely, but at the core still Hanzo and Jesse and their complicated mess of a relationship.

That thought is too much and Jesse’s orgasm hits with all the subtlety of a freight train. He rocks forward hard and Hanzo grunts, throwing both his hands out to hold himself upright as Jesse comes between his thighs.

He can feel Hanzo trembling like a leaf, and he doesn’t waste a moment, uses the arm he has around Hanzo’s waist to roll them over onto their sides, legs tangled together, and Jesse’s chin hooked over Hanzo’s shoulder.

He skims a hand through the mess he’s left on Hanzo’s skin and uses it to slick up his grip. This time when he jerks Hanzo off, it’s wet and smooth, the noise of it almost as loud as their panting breaths. He can feel the moment Hanzo’s body seizes up, and like this he has an excellent view when he comes, hands white knuckled in the sheets and his whole body bucking up as he spills over Jesse’s knuckles with a choked off curse.

Right then and there, Jesse swears he has a religious experience.

For a moment they just lay there, tangled together and fighting for their breath back. The both of them are a complete mess, and Jesse’s feels positively high off their combined scent, the press of Hanzo’s skin against his own.

He reaches up and tucks Hanzo’s hair out of his face. “You alright?”

Hanzo doesn’t answer but he doesn’t pull away. Cautiously, Jesse tightens his arm around his waist and gently drags him in closer. Hanzo doesn’t pull away, allows Jesse to shuffle them into a more comfortable position so they’re curled together tightly, sheets kicked down at their ankles. After a second Hanzo’s lifts his arm and knots their fingers together, slow and sweet. He shifts back against him just a little, moving with an almost heart-breaking cautiousness.

He’s just had this man panting and cursing in these sheets, but somehow this right here is what really gets to him. Hanzo’s affection is a rare and coveted thing, and Jesse stays still as stone, terrified of breaking the spell.

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, it could be five minutes, it could be five days. Time seems extremely unimportant, comparatively speaking. It doesn’t last forever though, because nothing ever can.

Eventually, Hanzo’s fingers slip from his and Jesse takes the hint and lets Hanzo crawl out of bed without protest. Hanzo doesn’t look back at him, and the sight of his broad back disappearing into the bathroom again leaves his aching heart sore and tender.

The shower hisses back to life. Jesse rolls over to stare at the ceiling and focuses very hard on thinking about nothing at all. It’s harder than he would have thought, but somehow he manages. If there’s one thing to be said about living the kind of life he has, it’s that it teaches restraint.

Hanzo stays in the bathroom for a long time. When he emerges his hair is damp and loose around his shoulders. Jesse doesn’t let himself look at his face too closely, far too afraid of what he’ll find.

He lays there for a second, waiting to see if Hanzo will say anything, but the quiet remains unbroken. Jesse’s heart is thudding against his ribcage and he gets to his feet, brushes past Hanzo on his way to the bathroom. Hanzo doesn’t even turn to look at him, and when Jesse shuts the door he feels strangely heavy for empty he feels.

He takes a small eternity in the shower, focuses on scrubbing Hanzo’s lingering scent from his skin, washing every trace of the past few days down the drain. It aches something fierce, but when Jesse had offered his companionship to Hanzo he’d made a promise not to make this into something it wasn’t, and he plans to abide by it.

He mightn’t be able to control the way he feels about this, about Hanzo, but he can control how he reacts to it. Hanzo has been through enough in life without Jesse getting his grubby hands all over it, overstepping his bounds and making himself into a nuisance.

What they’d shared had been more than he’d ever dared to hope for. He’s had Hanzo for almost a week, had the privilege of waking beside him in the morning and going to bed with him at night. It’s far more than he deserves, and he will not taint the memory of it by selfishly wishing for extra.

They’d had something, and it’d been real. He cannot possibly mourn its natural end.

When he comes out of the bathroom Hanzo is sitting on the bed, arms folded and spine ramrod straight. He’s completely and utterly expressionless. Jesse has seen marble easier to read than Hanzo’s face in this moment.

“So...” Jesse says, lacking anything else.

“So,” Hanzo repeats, which illuminates absolutely nothing.

Jesse scratches at his stubble awkwardly. He feels the faint burn Hanzo’s own beard left at his throat. “You seem to be… feeling better, yeah?”

“The heat fever is gone,” Hanzo agrees stiltedly.

Jesse bites the bullet and says, “And the heat as well.”

Hanzo smiles thinly. Looking at him without hormones making a mess out of the both of them, Jesse is suddenly conscious of how exhausted he is. There are some truly impressive bags beneath his eyes. Jesse doubt he looks much better, honestly speaking.

“So it would seem.”

“Well, that’s… that’s…” Jesse clears his throat. It feels like he’s swallowed a container of cement. “Good. I’m glad that you’re…” He waves a hand vaguely in Hanzo’s general direction. “Yourself again.”

Hanzo’s brow draws tighter. “I was myself during the heat too, Jesse.”

Jesse suddenly feels like he’s misstepped terribly although he’s not quite sure where or how to fix it. The awkwardness between them feels unnatural and Jesse’s don’t know where to even begin taking it apart again. It’s ridiculous that they’ve spent the past several days having more sex than he can count, but one conversation seems to be opening a chasm between them. The distance grows with every moment and it feels an awful lot like the ground is falling away beneath his feet.

“I know that. That’s not what I meant. I’m just - I know you dislike your heat, and I’m glad you don’t have to suffer it anymore.”

Even across the room Jesse can tell that Hanzo’s mouth looks mighty pinched. “Yes, ‘suffering’ my heat was… unpleasant.”

The chasm between them could rival the Grand Canyon right about now. If there are words to say to diffuse this tension, Jesse can’t find them. It’s every morning after and every single break-up Jesse has ever been through rolled into one.

“Alright,” Jesse says, and somehow he manages to slap on a grin that doesn’t even feel entirely forced. “It’s been a hell of a few days, but I don’t want things to be, ya’know, weird between us. Our friendship means a lot to me, and I don’t want this to change things. You needed a hand, and I was more than happy to help.”

For a second, he swears there’s an expression on Hanzo’s face that is almost readable, but it’s swept off and away before he can look too closely. “Yes,” Hanzo says, “our friendship means a great deal to me too, Jesse. For what it is worth, I do not think I could have done this with anybody else.”

Jesse’s heart stutters. _Ah, hell, darlin’_ , he thinks. _I’m tryin’ so hard here, don’t make it worse for me_.

“Alright,” Jesse says, far too loudly. “I’ll just… get outta your hair now, darlin’.”

“It’s four in the morning,” Hanzo says.

“Yeah, but we’re both awake, so I might as well just get while the getting is good.”

“I have no idea what that means,” Hanzo tells him.

“Yeah, me neither. It’s been real, sweetheart. I’ll see you in three hours for breakfast? If you’re feeling up to it, that is.”

“Jesse, I have spent several days too sick or horny to eat; yes, you will see me in the kitchen for an actual meal.”

It’s not enough to patch over the rough spots on Jesse’s shaky emotional core right now, but it’s something, and he takes it willingly. The smile he gives Hanzo feels a little more real this time. “Sleep well, Hanzo.”

“See you soon, Jesse.”

He leaves before he says something he regrets. He does not allow himself to look back, and the sound of Hanzo’s door closing behind him sounds awfully final.

 _There you go,_ Jesse thinks, and it’s only semi-hysterical. _You made it through in one piece after all. You’ve survived far worse than a few awkward bumps in your friendship and an unrequited crush; this isn’t going to be what brings you down, Jesse McCree._

He wishes he felt as confident as he sounded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry for the immeasurably long gaps between updates. this chapter has been... an adventure. thank you all so much for your patience, your love, and your endless support. the comments on this fic always remind me why i started writing it in the first place, and i hope you continue to stick with me as we hit our stride here. 
> 
> as always, find me on tumblr as glenflower!


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